India

As announced earlier India's own geographic information system (GIS) dubbed 'Bhuvan' is now available for download, currently under BETA release country's indigenous Google Earth is capable of Indian specific features not available in any other competing product, Bhuvan features multiple layers of information showing topography, altitude, depth weather and other features helpful in managing public services, internal security, town planning, and infrastructure development activities.

The web-based portal requires an initial plugin download in order to provide promising high-resolution 3-D satellite imagery with smooth video acceleration, Bhuvan offers images of the globe similar to Google Earth but provides best resolutions over the Indian sub-continent with ISRO having plans to expand high-resolution images globally.

India's first unmanned lunar mission Chandrayaan I (Meaning LunarCraft) is scheduled to be launched on 22 October 2008 at 00:50 UTC by India's own Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle-XL from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.

With the successful launch of this remote sensing satellite weighing 1304 kg India will become the sixth country to send any type of lunar mission in space, Chandrayaan-1 will take approximately eight days to complete its nearly 3,86,000 km long journey for reaching into its final orbit 100 km from the moon, Chandrayaan-1 will carry a high resolution remote sensing equipment for visible, near infrared, soft and hard X-ray frequencies. Over a two-year period, it is intended to survey the lunar surface to produce a complete map of its chemical characteristics and 3-dimensional topography. The polar regions are of special interest, as they might contain water ice.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will be broadcasting the CHANDRAYAAN-1 launch event live webcast from 0550 - 0650 Hrs (IST) on 22nd Oct 2008.