Chandrayaan-1, the country's first unmanned lunar venture, is slated for launch on October 22 and India has proposed Mars mission in 2013 and a human space flight by 2015.

China undertook a manned orbital flight in 2003 and launched a lunar satellite in October last year.

Ahead of Chandrayaan-1, India's most ambitious space venture to date, some analysts have said that it is an attempt to catch up with China and a space race involving the two Asian rivals.

However, ISRO chairman Madhavan Nair, who is also the Secretary in the Department of Space, disagrees with this view.

"Our priorities have been in providing the societal services, based on the space assets. There, we have been concentrating on earth observation and communication areas. Launch vehicles which are appropriate for these missions have been developed. That's way, we have developed technologies and systems required for national development", he told PTI in an interview.

"Now, since we have some breathing time (we can also focus on areas beyond the above mentioned areas), we are now concentrating on planetary explorations and activities which are supposed to be taken up for the next decade. In that context, we are now taking up the proposals for the manned mission and so on," he said.

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