Washington, Jan. 31: An unmanned Indian spacecraft will land on the moon by 2012 with Russian help, G Madhavan Nair, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), said here yesterday.

It will include a Russian-made lander and an orbiter, to be integrated as a single payload on an Indian spacecraft to be launched on an Indian-made geosynchronous satellite launch vehicle (GSLV).

This will be a follow up to Chandrayaan-1, India’s pioneering moon-bound mission, whose launch now appears to have been postponed to mid-2008 instead of the scheduled date of April 9.

Chandrayaan-1 will only orbit around the moon for two years, but the joint launch with the Russians will see the spacecraft actually land on the moon.

India’s space establishment is in a “conceptual study stage” on sending man into outer space and is approaching the government for funds, Nair said at a meeting on “transforming the Indian space programme” at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a think tank here.

“We have completed a design phase... and if the funding comes, maybe in seven to eight years we will have” an Indian crew in orbit, he told a high profile audience from the US scientific and commercial space community.

“We have already sensitised the government (on the) human space programme,” he added and a detailed project report is almost ready for submission.

Nair said India does not want to undertake a mission to Mars just for the sake of exploring Mars and will only do so if it is convinced of “what new things we can find”.

The US, he pointed out, already has several probes of Mars and data is being sent back to earth. He revealed in broad terms, however: “Yes, we have it on our agenda before 2012 that we should have a Mars mission, and we are seeing what instruments we should carry. What types of things we will be looking for in Mars are still being discussed.”

Underlining the need-based and optimised nature of the Indian space programme, the Isro chief said the joint moon mission with the Russians will only expose areas of the moon that have so far not been explored to avoid duplication and wasteful expenditure.

Describing space as the next frontier for humankind, he said a new, second vision of space is emerging globally.

In that context, “we recognise that a capability to have a manned presence in space is very important for future exploration”.

Teresita Schaffer, director of the South Asia programme at CSIS, recalled that when she was in charge of the region as a diplomat at the US state department, any talk of cooperating with India on outer space was “taboo”.

Taking up that theme, Nair was polite but firm in his implicit criticism of US sanctions on Indian space entities, some of which are continuing.

He made it crystal clear to the Americans that India’s space efforts were not dependent on US help.

His emphasis on cooperation with Russia was a subtle message to Americans that the Isro had a clear and big agenda and that the rest of the world was actively cooperating with that agenda.

Nair said Isro was cooperating with France on analysing cloud patterns and other projects and described Yannick d’Escatha, the president of the French space agency, the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, as a personal friend.

He painted a picture of amicability even with the space establishment in China, pointing out that Beijing’s space agency was using Indian satellites.

“We are not competing with China, we have our own priorities,” Nair said.