Jitendranath Goswami, director of the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), Ahmedabad, who was also involved in the successful launch of Chandrayaan-1, revealed recently that by 2020, India would be able to send a manned mission to the moon, while by 2012 the second unmanned spacecraft would be ready.

Goswami informed, “If everything goes as per the plan, we will be ready to send a man to moon by 2020.”

A payload called the high energy X-ray spectrometer will look for water ice in the polar regions of the moon and PRL is the laboratory that helped to build it. On Saturday, Goswami who belongs to Assam was in Guwahati, interacting with students, journalists, and academics.

The space scientist said, “Maybe in 50 years from now, there will be an alternate space to live in Mars.” He also added that he felt extremely proud to be part of the historic moon mission and spelt out other programmes in the pipeline.