Bangalore: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has selected the payload and begun the "metal cutting" process for the unmanned mission to the Moon which it plans to launch by 2008 using an indigenous rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota.

"The initial designs are completed, we have selected the payload and the Earth station design is also completed," ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair said today (June 18, 2004).

He said the metal cutting process has begun for the Moon mission which will put the country into a select club of space faring nations to map the moon surface and give more scientific insights on the Earth's satellite.

"The project is on schedule," Nair said of the mission in which ISRO's workhorse - the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) - will fire a lunar polar orbiter into space that will map the Moon's surface at an altitude of 100 km.

ISRO will also have a slot for a 10 kg scientific payload from an external agency in the lunar orbiter for which about 25 proposals have been received including from the US, Israel, Canada and France besides from several Indian academic institutions.

Nair said ISRO has finalised a contract to launch a satellite into the low Earth orbit from an European country next year using PSLV rocket.

He said INSAT-4 A communications satellite will be launched later this year and INSAT-4B next year.