The Minister of Energy of Australia, Mr. Martin Ferguson meeting the Minister of State for Coal, Shri Santosh Bagrodia, in New Delhi on November 05, 2008.

An MoU on “Action Plan for Indo-Australian collaboration on the Coal Sector” was signed here in the presence of the Minister for Coal,  Shri Santosh Bagrodia and the Minister for Energy of the Government of Australia, Mr. Martin Ferguson.

The main objectives of the Action Plan are to enhance opportunities in two-way trade and investments; increase bilateral cooperation and collaboration in the coal sector, including coal mining services; identify an address barriers to trade and investment opportunities.The key areas that this Action Plan will focus upon are:

• Mining Technology Services
• Underground Coal Mining
• Underground Coal Gasification
• Coal to Liquid Technologies
• Coal Bed Methane (CBM) Technologies
• Coal Washeries
• Abandoned Coal Mine Rehabilitation
• Sustainable Mining Practices
• Skilling, Training and Capacity Building

The activities envisaged under this Action Plan in the year 2008-09 are:

• Encouragement of two-way visits and promotion of information exchanges by Ministers, senior officials, industry delegations, scientists and researchers working on the coal sector.
• Continued Bi-lateral collaboration on existing projects under the Asia-Pacific Partnership on clean development and climate, coal mining task force.
• Follow-up conference to the bi-lateral Coal and Mining Conference held in February, 2006 and encouragement of attendance at other premier coal related conference in India and Australia. 

This Action Plan is formulated under the auspices of the Australia-India Joint Working Group on Minerals and Energy (JWG) and will provide focus to the immediate work of the JWG.  Progress and completion reports under this Action Plan will be delivered at JWG meetings.
This Action Plan can be expanded or amended by mutual consent of the two countries, and any such amendment will be in writing.

This Action Plan is not intended to create a legally binding agreement. 
This MoU was signed by Mr. Bob Pegler, Head of Resource Division, Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism, on behalf of the Commonwealth of Australia and Shri K.S. Kropha, The Ministry of External Affairs has started issuing e-passports, also known as biometric passports, in the diplomatic and official categories since June 2008, with full roll out of e-passports in the ordinary passport category by September, 2009. The e-passports will be much safer against forgeries and will further facilitate the movement of their holders through the border points equipped with e-passport

On Nov. 4, following a fifth orbit-raising manoeuvre, the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft successfully settled into a trajectory that will take it to the Moon. After launch on 22 October, the spacecraft was first injected into an elliptical 7-hr orbit around Earth, between 255 km and 22 860 km above our planet. After five engine firings, Chandrayaan-1 spiralled outwards in increasingly elongated ellipses around Earth, until it reached its lunar transfer orbit on 4 November at 00:26 CET (04:56 Indian standard time). 

In the fifth and last orbit-raising manoeuvre, the spacecraft’s 440 Newton liquid-fuel propelled engine was fired for about two and a half minutes. The lunar transfer orbit’s farthest point from Earth is about 380 000 km. The spacecraft, which is being monitored from the Spacecraft Control Centre at the Indian Space Research Organisation’s ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bangalore, is working very well. Chandrayaan-1’s Terrain Mapping camera (TMC) was successfully tested on 29 October and provided its first images, depicting Earth.

Chandrayaan-1 will approach the Moon on 8 November 2008 when the spacecraft’s liquid-fuel propelled engine will be fired again. This manoeuvre, called lunar orbit insertion, will decelerate the spacecraft to allow the Moon’s gravity to capture it into an elliptical lunar orbit. A series of further manoeuvres will then progressively lower the altitude of Chandrayaan-1 around the Moon until it reaches its final 100 km circular orbit. The previous four orbit-raising manoeuvres took place on 23, 25, 26 and 29 October 2008, respectively. Chandrayaan-1, India’s first mission to venture beyond Earth’s orbit, is led by ISRO. ESA has coordinated and supported the provision of the three European instruments on board (C1XS, SARA, SIR-2), and assisted ISRO in areas such as flight dynamics and is supporting data archiving and processing. As a result of the collaboration, ESA and ISRO will share the data from their respective instruments. Other international partners in the mission include Bulgaria and the USA.