Chandrayaan II design complete

New Delhi, Dec 24 (IANS) The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Wednesday said the design for Chandrayaan II has been completed and it will be launched by 2012.

'The designs for Chandrayaan II have been completed and we hope to launch it by 2012,' ISRO chairperson G. Madhavan Nair told reporters here on the sidelines of a function organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) to felicitate the Chandrayaan I team.

The Chandrayaan II project is slated to land a small rover on the moon's surface and collect and analyse samples, he said.

The ISRO has made another achievement recently, when a commercial satellite built by the organisation for the European satellite operator, Eutelsat, was successfully launched from French Guiana in South America.

Nair noted that the ISRO was earning about Rs.10 billion (Rs.1,000 crore) annually from its commercial wing. This is expected to grow at 20 percent per year, he added.