India to the Moon - Page 7

ravens_cry · #**181** (**permalink**) 11-November-2008, 09:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PraedSt

I'm glad you mentioned ICBMs. Because I went looking. You're technically correct:
Agni, an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile
Surya, an ICBM under development

Only technically.

Anyway, that isn't why I'm glad. While investigating, I found this:

That's huge!

This method seems conceptually similar to a rumour I'd read about: many years ago the Russians discovered a way of reducing high velocity drag by firing lasers into the air-stream. I'm preparing a thread as we speak. I bet you all can't wait...

Woah, that IS huge. In a time when space travel is reinventing the wheel, and even advances in computer speed are slowing down, that is MEGA huge.
But is there any new news on Chandrayaan 1?

PraedSt · #**182** (**permalink**) 11-November-2008, 12:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by djellison

Seem comparatively similar to the HRSC on MEX.

Sorry mate, just saw your post! After a quick search, it turns out that you were right, as usual. Instrument design: HRSC

Quote:

Stereo imaging is performed using nadir-directed, forward looking (+18.9°), and aft-looking (-18.9°) line sensors with a spectral range of 675 ± 90 nm. Known as triple panchromatic along-track stereo, this technique permits robust stereo reconstruction by on-ground digital processing and rectification through attitude reconstruction, feature matching and bundle adjustment, followed by the generation of digital terrain models and higher-level products. In general, the nadir-looking channel delivers the highest resolution images, while the two outer stereo channel images will be transmitted at lower resolution after pixel summation.

So the boys at ISRO may have been exaggerating slightly. Maybe it was like that sports thread we had a little while back. The first 3D camera launched in the month of October, on a Wednesday, before noon.

01101001 · #**183** (**permalink**) 11-November-2008, 04:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ravens_cry

But is there any new news on Chandrayaan 1?

Was.

From ISRO Press Releases:

First Lunar Orbit Reduction Manoeuvre of Chandrayaan-1 Successfully Carried Out:

Quote:

The first orbit reduction manoeuvre of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft which is orbiting the moon, was successfully performed yesterday (November 9, 2008) night. As part of that manoeuvre which began at 20:03 IST, the 440 Newton liquid engine of the spacecraft was fired for about 57 seconds. With this, the nearest point of Chandrayaan-1’s orbit (periselene) from the moon’s surface was reduced from 504 km to 200 km while the farthest point (aposelene) remained unchanged at 7,502 km. In this elliptical orbit, Chandrayaan-1 takes about ten and a half hours to circle the moon once.

===

Ceci n'est pas un lien ferme.
ISRO, Indian Space Research Organisation
ISRO Press Releases
ISRO: Chandrayaan-1
ESA: Chandrayaan-1
Wikipedia: Chandrayaan
Planetary Society: Chandrayaan-I Mission
Twitter: Chandrayaan 1 (unofficial)
Chandrayaan Lunar Mission (unofficial, by an enthusiast)

01101001 · #**184** (**permalink**) 11-November-2008, 09:55 PM

Planetary Society Weblog: Chandrayaan-1's first picture of the Moon

Quote:

Here is the first image taken by Chandrayaan-1 of the Moon, taken while it was still in Earth orbit on November 4. It's a bit underwhelming -- until you realize that the camera was designed to take photos of the Moon from a distance 3,000 times closer than this.

ISRO Images From Chandrayaan-1:

01101001 · #**185** (**permalink**) 12-November-2008, 05:36 AM

I just found Twitter: Chandrayaan 1. (Edit: Sorry. Beware that it's unofficial.)

Quote:

thank you, will be in 100 kms circular polar orbit in next 24 hrs, I reckon. 15 minutes ago from mobile web in reply to NASA_SDO_HMI
[...]
Thats my second lunar orbit shrinking to get to a 100 kms circular orbit around the moon. about 7 hours ago from mobile web
My orbit was shrunk to 255.3 kms (aposelene) and 101.3 kms (pericelene) and it takes me a little more than 2 hrs to go around the moon. about 7 hours ago from mobile web
[...]
The moon impact will happen either on Nov 14/15. Exact details would spoil all the fun. Keep your eyes on the Shackleton crater. about 12 hours ago from mobile web

Sounds like they're going to apply the calibrated hammer to Shackleton. Maybe the idea was to look for ice/water -- but, didn't recent evidence indicate ice was unlikely? Well, it's probably still the best hope.

Edit: Here it is: Universe Today: Life Will be Hard for Colonists - Kaguya Can't Find Water on the Moon

Quote:

It's been a long-held belief that the Moon is hiding significant quantities of water ice, safe from the Sun's ablative effects inside shady craters. One such crater is called Shackleton at the lunar South Pole and previous Moon missions have indicated it might hold a large reservoir of ice for all the water needs of future Moon colonists. Alas, the Japanese lunar mission Kaguya (or the Selenological and Engineering Explorer - "SELENE") has taken a peek into the crater to find… nothing. At least, it hasn't spotted any significant quantities of surface ice.

aquitaine · #**186** (**permalink**) 12-November-2008, 08:02 AM

Quote:

and even advances in computer speed are slowing down

How so?

ravens_cry · #**187** (**permalink**) 12-November-2008, 09:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aquitaine

How so?

Look at the Duel core processors. Sure, they are nice and zippy, but instead of one processor, we have two, so DUH it is more zippy. But it needing two instead of one, says to me that personal computing is hitting a wall of sorts. How hard and tall it is only time will tell.

Nicolas · #**188** (**permalink**) 12-November-2008, 11:49 AM

That wall is the minimum transistor size limit, as far as I understood.

01101001 · #**189** (**permalink**) 12-November-2008, 01:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 01101001

I just found Twitter: Chandrayaan 1.

I just noticed it is unofficial. It's probably just speculation by a fan. I'm removing it from the link farm. I should have been more skeptical.

HypothesisTesting · #**190** (**permalink**) 12-November-2008, 04:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Glom

Yeah it appears that India and China are the future of manned spaceflight.

You're correct,

and this didn't have to happen. My grumpy disposition ( a version of GOM) focuses on lost opportunities and in 1972 I was totally against cancelling Apollo and the diversion into the shuttle by US. I still can't believe US didn't go forward and have a thriving moon base for these 30 years. Although totally debunked by now, I can see why the moon conspiracies started. It made no sense to cancel the moon missions.

01101001 · #**191** (**permalink**) 12-November-2008, 05:18 PM

From ISRO Press Releases

Chandrayaan-1 Successfully Reaches its Operational Lunar Orbit

Quote:

Today, Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft has successfully reached its intended operational orbit at a height of about 100 km from the lunar surface. This followed a series of three orbit reduction manoeuvres conducted during the past three days by repeatedly firing the spacecraft’s 440 Newton Liquid Engine. As part of these manoeuvres, the engine was fired for a cumulative duration of about sixteen minutes. As a result of these manoeuvres, the farthest point of Chandrayaan-1’s orbit (aposelene) from the moon’s surface was first reduced from 7,502 km to 255 km and finally to 100 km while the nearest point (periselene) was reduced from 200 km to 182 km and finally to 100 km.
[...]
The next major event of Chandrayaan-1 mission planned in the coming days is the release of Moon Impact Probe (MIP) from the spacecraft and its eventual hitting of the moon’s surface.

Congratulations, again, to India, Indians, ISRO, and all involved! Great achievement.

The Chandrayaan1 Twitter speculated on a Friday (India time) release of the impact probe. Also, the Twitter mentioned conveying a message to the Chandrayaan team, so it might be slightly more than just a fan -- or maybe it is just a fan who knows an email address inside ISRO: "Will convey msg to the team. Good question, will ask and get back to you." I can't tell how reliable the information might be.

cjameshuff · #**192** (**permalink**) 12-November-2008, 06:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ravens_cry

Look at the Duel core processors. Sure, they are nice and zippy, but instead of one processor, we have two, so DUH it is more zippy. But it needing two instead of one, says to me that personal computing is hitting a wall of sorts. How hard and tall it is only time will tell.

It's just a change in the way computer power is increased, and not the first one. RAM used to run at the same clock rate as the processor...then fancy memory controllers and multiple layers of cache came into use, due to the difficulty in getting large capacity RAM chips to work at high speeds. Processors used to fetch and execute one instruction at a time, then makers started to pipeline them, first fetching one instruction while executing the previous, and then lengthening the pipelines to support multiple instructions "in flight" at a time, sacrificing branch performance to efficiently handle highly predictable streams of instructions. Hyperthreading allowed a higher degree of parallelism on a single core, and multicore allows fully independent threads of execution to proceed simultaneously.

There *are* physical limits that determine the way things have developed...assume a 20 cm path from the processor to the RAM module, 0.8c signal propagation velocity, and no processing delays on the way there. A 3 GHz processor will execute 2.5 instructions by the time a read or write even reaches the RAM. At high speeds, clock skew across the die of the processor itself becomes more and more of an issue. Multiple cores allow processing power to be increased further without making these issues worse. It wasn't widely done before because it is very expensive in terms of silicon space, and it's done now because that price has become more reasonable in comparison to that of increasing clock rate.

01101001 · #**193** (**permalink**) 12-November-2008, 10:05 PM

We'll tuck it in here, but some day it may well warrant a topic of its own.

Zeenews.com: ISRO to develop Sun mission 'Aditya'

Quote:

Bangalore, Nov 10: After the success of Chandrayaan -1, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has conceptually developed a Sun mission called ''Aditya''.

ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair, said the success of Chandrayaan -1 has boosted the confidence of ISRO scientists to look beyond the moon.

KaiYeves · #**194** (**permalink**) 12-November-2008, 11:10 PM

You know, as a fan of Ernest Shackleton, I'd actually be happy if it turned out it held no ice and his namesake crater didn't have to get whacked.

Prakshepak · #**195** (**permalink**) 13-November-2008, 08:16 AM

http://www.hindu.com/fline/fl2324/st...5001909000.htm

Space Exploration related developments in India

xCygon · #**196** (**permalink**) 14-November-2008, 02:41 AM

aditya mission sounds interesting, any more details on it?

01101001 · #**197** (**permalink**) 14-November-2008, 03:24 AM

Twitter: Chandrayaan 1

Quote:

I will drop the 29kgs MIP tmrw at 10 pm(IST). It has miniature flags painted on 4 sides to signify India's entry on the moon. about 18 hours ago from mobile web

Moon Impact Probe, MIP

Quote:

The impact probe weighing 29 kg will ride piggyback on the top deck of the main orbiter and will be released at a predetermined time after the orbiter reaches the final 100km orbit to impact at a pre-selected location. During the descent phase it is in spin-stabilized configuration. The total flight time from release to impact on Moon will be close to twenty minutes.
[...]

Radar Altimeter - for measurement of altitude of the Moon Impact Probe above the lunar surface and qualify technologies for future landing missions. The operating frequency band is 4.3 GHz � 100 MHz
Video Imaging System - for acquiring images of the surface of moon from the descending probe. The video imaging system consists of analog CCD camera along with a video decoder
Mass Spectrometer - A state-of-the-art Quadrupole mass spectrometer with a mass resolution of 0.5 amu and sensitive to partial pressure of the order of 10-15 torr for measuring the constituents of tenuous lunar atmosphere during descent.

Impactor release:
November 14, 0830 PST, Friday
November 14, 1130 EST, Friday
November 14, 1630 UTC, Friday
November 14, 2200 IST, Friday

(Most say 2200 IST release, but one news report (Times of India) has the impactor landing at 2030 IST.)

01101001 · #**198** (**permalink**) 14-November-2008, 05:38 PM

Impactor release:
November 14, 0830 PST, Friday
November 14, 1130 EST, Friday
November 14, 1630 UTC, Friday
November 14, 2200 IST, Friday

Haven't heard. Haven't looked. Shall look...

Looks like it was released about 3 hours ago. Impact near Shackleton.

Twitter:

Quote:

@zvezdichko - no data from MIP after impacting surface.
less than a minute ago from mobile web in reply to Zvezdichko
The impact has caused the instruments to not continue functioning but not before providing useful descent data. 2 minutes ago from mobile web
Geting mixed info about status of MIP. Still awaiting official word from ground control after data analysis. about 1 hour ago from mobile web
Thank you everyone for your congragulations. about 1 hour ago from mobile web
Impact was close to Shackleton crater. about 1 hour ago from mobile web
According to initial reports, MIP has survived the landing. I'll be studying the debris for more details along with data sent back about 1 hour ago from mobile web
@cfrjlr - please re confirm. For us, the most important thing is that the Indian tricolor is now on the moon. about 2 hours ago from mobile web in reply to cfrjlr
@tavigreiner - 4th country to plant flag on the moon. about 2 hours ago from mobile web in reply to TaviGreiner
@cfrjlr - 4th country to plant flag on moon after USA, USSR and European Union (17 countries) about 2 hours ago from mobile web in reply to cfrjlr
REPEAT MIP successfully reaches lunar surface. about 2 hours ago from mobile web

ISRO Press Release: Indian Tricolour Placed on the Moon on Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s Birthday

Quote:

In a historic event, the Indian space programme achieved a unique feat today (November 14, 2008) with the placing of Indian tricolour on the Moon’s surface on Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s birthday. The Indian flag was painted on the sides of Moon Impact Probe (MIP), one of the 11 payloads of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, that successfully hit the lunar surface today at 20:31 hrs (8:31 pm) IST. This is the first Indian built object to reach the surface of the moon. The point of MIP’s impact was near the Moon’s South Polar Region. It may be recalled that the modern Indian space programme was initiated in 1962 when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the Prime Minister of India. [...]

If the impact was 2031 IST, release was even earlier, 2006 IST. All the sources I saw were wrong, but Times of India gets closeness points.

Prakshepak · #**199** (**permalink**) 14-November-2008, 09:20 PM

http://isro.org/pslv-c11/photos/moon_images.htm

manmeetvirdi · #**200** (**permalink**) 15-November-2008, 12:48 AM

Will the altimeter graph taken by MIP will be published by ISRO for the public.
I think in few days time it should. I remember NASA doing so in case of Phoenix.

01101001 · #**201** (**permalink**) 16-November-2008, 03:13 AM

Same pictures, I think.

Planetary Society Weblog: Pictures from the Chandrayaan-1 Moon Impact Probe

Quote:

There are a few confusions circulating on the Internet about this event that I'd like to clear up to the best of my knowledge. First of all, some news outlets are reporting that the Moon Impact Probe "landed" on the surface, implying that it survived, but the ISRO press release clearly states that the hard landing "terminated its functioning." Secondly, some people have interpreted the description of the Probe's "video imaging system" to mean that it was taking a real time movie of the descent, but, at least as far as I understand it, the video imaging system produced only still images, two of which are shown above.* Video or TV type imaging is appropriate for something like the Probe because the images are relatively low quality but can be transmitted instantly, which you need to do if you know your spacecraft is going to die shortly after it takes the images. [...]

[...] the probe actually returned about 15,000 images over the course of the 25-minute descent. That comes out to 10 frames per second -- slower than regular TV video, but not all that much slower. If that number is correct, it should produce a pretty impressive animation once ISRO has been able to assemble it.

Prakshepak · #**202** (**permalink**) 16-November-2008, 09:07 PM

TMC Image 1
TMC Image 2

PraedSt · #**203** (**permalink**) 17-November-2008, 06:03 PM

Space Review article suggesting India be given ISS partnership.

India on the ISS: it starts with a rack.

Quote:

India’s Chandrayaan-1 moon mission has not only been a scientific and technological success, but it has been an international political winner. By incorporating instruments from Europe and the US as well as their own ones, and doing so in an open way, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has proven itself to be, without question, one of the world’s top space agencies.

Quote:

What makes sense for the ISS partnership in the short term is to offer India full control of an experimental rack. The agreement with Japan stipulates that a number of the racks in the Kibo module will be controlled by NASA. Since the US has been cutting back on some of the science work it once planned to do on the ISS, it would be logical to offer this space to India, free of charge. ISRO could then take charge of outfitting the rack with experiments devised by Indian scientists.

KaiYeves · #**204** (**permalink**) 18-November-2008, 12:41 AM

I second the notion! And China, too!

01101001 · #**205** (**permalink**) 19-November-2008, 08:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 01101001

Planetary Society Weblog: Pictures from the Chandrayaan-1 Moon Impact Probe

Quote:

[...] the probe actually returned about 15,000 images over the course of the 25-minute descent.

3100, according to Planetary Society Weblog update.

That's still a bunch. I'm looking forward to the movie.

Bolasanibk · #**206** (**permalink**) 20-November-2008, 05:10 AM

Video made from the TMC images:
Clicky

And a composite image made from the frames about video
Clicky
(courtsey Phil Stooke@UnmannedSpaceFilght.com)

PraedSt · #**207** (**permalink**) 20-November-2008, 07:49 AM

Thanks bolasanibk. I just realised that the terrain imaging camera on Chandrayaan has a higher resolution than the one on Selene (5m vs 10m). I was confused by the HDTV the Japanese have.

Bolasanibk · #**208** (**permalink**) 20-November-2008, 11:30 AM

No problem PraedSt, Just an excuse to boast of my country's achievements.

01101001 · #**209** (**permalink**) 24-November-2008, 06:51 PM

BA Blog: Chandrayaan-1 is mapping the Moon

Quote:

[Image: lunar south pole] Chandrayaan-1 has much higher resolution than this, so I’m assuming this image is not shown in full res. Still, it’s very pretty, and I’m happy to see it. I’m hoping the Indian Space Research Organization will release more images soon, as well as some in full resolution. Stay tuned… and as usual, check Emily’s blog, since she usually gets the inside word on these things.

ESA: Chandrayaan-1 starts observations of the Moon

One Skunk Todd · #**210** (**permalink**) 26-November-2008, 02:17 PM

CNN is reporting that the orbiter is overheating somewhat:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/1...obe/index.html

The explanation makes no sense to me:

Quote:

Originally Posted by CNN

The increase occurred as the craft, the moon -- which it is orbiting -- and the sun lined up, a phenomenon which Annadurai said was not unexpected and which would likely last until the end of December.

Is it in a polar orbit and now in constant sunlight?

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