Looking into the future on a bright, sunny day in January 2050 at Sriharikota (SHAR), the space port of ISRO, preparations are in full swing for a major launch event. At T-0 India’s Lunar Launch Vehicle lifts off from the launch pad with a module with three Indian crew members on board. After 20 minutes of arduous journey it reaches the fuelling station and gets docked on to it, collects enough fuel and begins its ‘lunar saga’, a trip to the moon and back.

It is going to be a long journey for the crew ... traversing nearly 400,000 km and reaching ‘destination moon’ in about four days. There is nothing much for the crew to do but relax. On the fourth day, on entering the lunar orbit, at about 500 km away from the moon, the lunar capsule acquires the parking orbit and then a polar orbit. At this juncture the lunar descent module detaches from the main capsule. All the crew members are now crammed into the lunar module and rapidly descend into the ‘Jawahar Sthal’ near the South Pole of the moon.

The crew now come out wearing the pressurised lunar suit and are given a warm reception by team members already habituating the lunar base. The lunar base, which is roughly the size of a football field, has the appearance of a tent, except that the material by which the tent is made has the unique property of warding off harmful particles and radiation bombarding the moon to keep the ‘earth–dwellers’ residing in it safe. It has an artificial atmosphere and is well lit, like with flood lights, powered by continuous energy from a nuclear fusion reactor using helium-3, which is aplenty there.

The crew members are engaged in the pre-planned biological experiments and synthesis of exotic materials that is possible under low gravity conditions. At another area, one finds hectic mining activity redeeming the costly helium-3 from titanate components. Yet another group is all set with preparations for a space ship that is about to embark on its journey to mars, exploiting the advantage of the low gravity of the moon.

The above seems to be fiction at present, but could be reality in years to come. Looking back, year 2009 had been a historical one for India and the Indian space programme. India’s Chandrayaan-I provided the first conclusive evidence for the presence of water on moon. India took its first footsteps on a lunar mission, the Chandrayaan-I on October 22, 2008. Two months later on November 14, the Moon Impact Probe placed the Indian tricolour on the moon’s surface (named ‘Jawahar Sthal’ subsequently).

With an all round success in its very first attempt, ISRO had thus proved its capability to embark on an extra terrestrial expedition. It has thus set the stage for the human exploration of the moon... Colonisation of the moon is now eminently do-able for India!

Water is a basic requirement of any human habitat and recent studies by NASA indicating the presence of up to six billion tonnes of ice are quite supportive of future colonisation plans. The discovery of water on the moon means that with great effort, this vital resource can be extracted on the lunar surface to support a future low-gravity industrial base.

The moon can be considered as the ultimate out-of-town science park. It can be argued that virtually all of the raw materials needed by any lunar colony are already hidden in the regolith – rubble of rock fragments and dust that covers the lunar surface, and the technology needed to exploit them is the challenge for the science community.

While few of the organic food stocks of the terrestrial industry are available on the moon, trace elements including carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen are constantly delivered by solar winds. It is even possible to grow vegetables in a mini green house by planting hardy vegetables from the Brassica family, like Brussels sprouts and cabbages. A series of inorganic reactions can create simple organic molecules such as ethene and formaldehyde, which can then be built into basic foodstuffs and plastics.

History shows that the first step is colonisation and - the pressing issue – is staking a claim, a la Antarctica. With the present achievements, colonising the moon or Mars is surely not that far away for India! The moon belongs to no one – yet. So let us begin our efforts now towards colonising it.