India plans moon shot in 2020: Lanka plans H’tota shot this year

Big brother India, who received its independence a year before Lanka did, has great plans for 2020. On January 1st, India announced that she plans to make another moon shot and will land an unmanned mission on the moon’s surface within this year.

This comes in the wake of last year’s failed bid when, just minutes before touchdown, India lost radio contact with the vessel. Did this setback put India in the doldrums and blame it all on karma? Nay, she bounced back with whim and vigour, determined to learn from her past mistakes and get it right the second time around.

This time the word is that work is going smoothly on the plan to put a rover probe on the moon, Indian Space Research Organisation chairman K. Sivan told a press conference.

Indian sources said authorities had set November as a target for launch. India is seeking to become only the fourth nation after Russia, the United States and China to put a mission on the moon’s surface and boost its credentials as a low-cost space power. The country’s Chandrayaan-2 module crash-landed on the moon’s surface in September.

Sivan added that India had chosen four candidate astronauts to take part in the country’s first manned mission into orbit, pledged to take place by mid-2022. The journey to the moon is approximately 240,250 miles from earth.

Meanwhile, what is little old Lanka up to? The same day, January 1st, India announced her moon shot plan this year so did Lanka announce her own plan to reach Hambantota this year.

The word on the street is that final touches are being put to complete the 60 mile stretch between Matara and Hambantota. The target date is going to be in the first quarter of 2020. It will see the completion of Lanka’s first expressway from Colombo to Hambantota, a total distance of approximately 180 miles.

For Big Brother India, who, like the hare, plans to race to the moon this year, Lanka’s snail crawl to Hambantota may not be something to write home about. But though it may have taken 72 years for Lanka to do so, slowly but surely like the tortoise we’re steadily, god willing, getting there, aren’t we?