Here at The Great Beyond we’ve been quite enthused by Chandrayaan-1, the Indian mission to the Moon. But our paltry blogging pales into insignificance compared to the frenzy of excitement that the probe has generated in India.

The Times of India reports that the Indian Space Research Organisation is already preparing an equally headline-grabbing mission, called Aditya, to study the Sun.

“In fact, the design is just getting completed,” says ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair. “During solar maxim we would like to see the type of emissions which are taking place in the Sun and how it interacts with the ionosphere and atmosphere and so on.”

Meanwhile, back near the Moon…

The Hindu notes that Chandrayaan-1’s impactor will probably be released on either the 14th or the 15th of November. This instrument will then smash into the Moon’s surface. “Since the MIP is painted with the Indian flag on its sides, it will symbolically register the Indian presence on the Moon,” says the paper.

Astute readers will have noticed that the name of this probe implies it might be the first in a series. Sure enough last month a number of papers reported that an Indian-Russian joint project would take Chandrayaan-2 to the Moon at the end of 2009 or in early 2010.

“The second mission, for which the ISRO and Russian federal space agency have already signed a pact, would feature a lander and a rover for a soft land on moon,” noted The Economic Times.

“Overall configuration is finalised but the scientific experiments are yet to be finalised, [this] may take six months,” Nair told the Press Trust Of India. “The lander will be from Russia. … The rover will be a joint development between Russia and India.”

Russia is not the only country forging space-links with India, as the Asia Times notes:

India and Japan’s agreement in October to expand cooperation between the Indian Space Research Organization and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, in the field of disaster management, has the raised the ire of a China fearful that the US is masterminding a powerful space alliance between its allies in the region.