NEW DELHI, May 9 (Xinhua) -- Indian and U.S. space agencies Tuesday signed an agreement to put two U.S.-made scientific instruments on board of Chandrayaan-I, India's first unmanned moon explorer, in 2008, Indo-Asian News Service reported.

    National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) administrator Michael Griffin and Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) chairperson G. Madhavan Nair signed the memorandum of understanding (MoU) at the Indian space agency's satellite application center in Bangalore Tuesday.

    NASA will put one mini synthetic aperture radar (Mini SAR) and moon mineralogy mapper (M3) on board of Chandrayaan-I, according to the agreement.

    "The objective of SAR is to detect water in the permanently shadowed areas of lunar polar regions, while M3 will map the minerals on the lunar surface and study its characterization," Nair said.

    Chandrayaan-I will be launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) at Sriharikota in southeast India's Andhra Pradesh, by an advanced polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV), into a 240-24,000 km earth orbit and placed subsequently in a 100-km polar orbit around the moon, with its own propulsion system.

    Besides two U.S. instruments, Chandrayaan will carry four instruments of the European Space Agency (ESA), one from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and five Indian payloads, totaling 12 on board.

    The moon explorer will obit the moon for over two years conducting various experiments including mapping the lunar surface, investigating its surface properties. Enditem