For the second time in a year, a NASA camera aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite captured a 'lunar photobomb' -- a stunning view the Moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth, crossing over the Indian and Pacific oceans.
The successful launch of Aditya-L1 - the country's maiden mission to study the Sun - is expected to garner increased investor interest in the Indian space sector and trigger more funding for private players. Several private sector players, including Larsen & Toubro (L&T), MTAR Technologies, and Ananth Technologies, have played a pivotal role in the Indian Space Research Organisation's (Isro's) solar observatory mission. Aditya-L1 on Saturday set off on a 125-day journey on a PSLV-C57 rocket, in its attempt to study various elements relating to the nearest star from the halo orbit around Lagrange point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system, which is about 1.5 million km from Earth.
The spacecraft structure for the mission has arrived at the ISRO satellite centre from Hindustan Aeronauticals Limited and integration work has begun, S Krishnamurthy, director, Publications and Public Relations, told PTI from Bangalore.
Efforts are also on for increasing the solar cell efficiency for energy production.
China's first lunar rover on Saturday successfully landed on the moon, making the communist giant one of three world powers to make a "soft landing" as part of an ambitious programme that aims to put a Chinese astronaut on the moon.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration's moon mineralogy mapper, an instrument on board India's lunar mission Chandrayaan-1, has clicked this magnificent image of the moon.The photograph shows a tricolour composite of reflected infrared radiation from the sun and illustrates the extent to which different materials are mapped across the side of the moon that faces the earth.Small amounts of water were detected on the surface of the moon at various locations.
India, with its demonstrated capabilities of undertaking low cost high value inter-planetary travel, offers great opportunities for NASA to work with.
Scientists will see two spacecraft slamming into the moon's south pole at 9,000 kmph kicking up a 10-km-high shower of debris that National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) hopes will confirm the presence of enough water necessary to supply future visits by astronauts.
Director of Indian Space Research Organisation's Space Applications Centre based in Ahmedabad, Dr Ranganath R Navalgund said the terrain mapping camera, an Indian instrument on the lunar mission, has found "new types of rocks" and hollow tunnels.
He said the ISRO scientists have a very strong spirit of working and will not rest till the objective is met.
In a huge setback to China's ambitious space programme, its first lunar rover Yutu or the Jade Rabbit was declared dead after attempts to revive it failed, media reports said on Wednesday.
In a belated action, defence public sector undertakings Bharat Electronics Limited has removed former Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman G Madhavan Nair from its Board of Directors as he was barred from holding any government post for his role in the controversial Antrix-Devas deal.
Modi addressed scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation command centre in Bengaluru, who were involved in the Chandrayaan-3 mission and lauded them for their efforts.
"I am extremely happy to announce that GSLV Mark III successfully injected Chandrayaan 2 in the defined orbit, infact the orbit is 6,000 km more than what was intended," Sivan said.
A US-led team has found that there is at least 100 times more water in the moon's minerals that was previously believed -- in fact, the scientists have based its findings on an analysis of the mineral apatite in lunar rocks picked up by Apollo space missions and in lunar meteorite found in Africa.
The lessons learned from the failure of Chandrayaan-2 contributed to the success of India's third lunar mission, former space scientist with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Nambi Narayanan said, after the successful touchdown of the 'Vikram' lander on the lunar South Pole.
China's lunar mission aiming to send 'robotic explorers' before 2020, on Sunday landed its first satellite on Moon, as the Communist nation braces to compete in space technology with countries like the United States, Russia and India.
Buoyed by the success of Chandrayaan-I, space scientists now plan to conquer new frontiers by sending a robot on moon in 2012 and a spacecraft to Mars the following year which will also see an Indian astronaut in space.
Chari, 43, will serve as the commander while NASA's Tom Marshburn will be pilot and ESA's Matthias Maurer will serve as a mission specialist for the SpaceX Crew-3 mission to the ISS, which is expected to launched next year.
Here's a quick look at the winners of the 81st Annual Golden Globe awards.
Harshal Parikh used to tell people that he was a member of ISRO's Moon mission and that senior officials of Defence Research and Development Organisation his friends.
Stanishev's engagements this week include a visit to the campus of Infosys Technologies Limited.
The American agency said the data from the two instruments Mineralogy Mapper and Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar (Mini-SAR) will contribute to its understanding of the lunar environment and are part of its implementation of its space exploration policy which calls for robotic and human missions to the moon.
A number of private companies have contributed to the development of ISRO's Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft which successfully landed near the south pole of the Moon on Wednesday evening.
K Radhakrishnan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation, has said that India is preparing to launch its second moon mission Chandrayaan-II by 2013. "The Chandrayaan-II we are planning to have in the year 2013. By that time, we should have our GSLV (Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle) flying with the Indigenous Cryogenic Engine Stage. That is the target with which we are working," said Radhakrishnan.
The decision to provide Z grade security was taken by the Karnataka government following specific threats to ISRO scientists by the Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Dawaood Ibrahim.
The Bharatiya Janaat Party's 'lotus' bloomed for the first time in south India in 2008 but the saffron party had little time to celebrate as Karnataka was rocked by serial bomb blasts in capital Bangalore and attacks on churches that drew flak in the country and abroad.
The successful launch of seven satellites on Wednesday has placed India among the best in the field of space research. And, behind the success story of the launch is a team that has been silently working for five long years.
"The receiver is kept on. Hoping for a successful awakening for another set of assignments! Else, it will forever stay there as India's lunar ambassador," it said.
DRDO's failures over the decades have contributed significantly to India becoming the world's biggest weapons importer, points out Lieutenant General Prakash Katoch (retd).
Summary of sports events and persons who made news on Tuesday
India is set to launch in a month its powerful rocket with a homemade cryogenic engine to propel a satellite into a geosynchronous orbit and become only the sixth nation to develop this complex engine.The much awaited launch has been billed as a landmark event for the country's space programme after its maiden unmanned moon mission Chandrayaan-I in 2008.India had been using Russia-made cryogenic engines so far for satellite launchings.
Indian Space research Organisation Chairman G Madavan Nair said on Monday that India would launch a mission to Mars by 2013.Earlier, on August 13, the government sanctioned seed money of Rs 10 crore for the Mars project, to carry out various studies on the experiments to be conducted, the route of the mission and other related details necessary to scale the new frontier.The ISRO has begun the preparations for sending a spacecraft to Mars.
The reddish polar region on Pluto's largest moon, Charon, is an effect of methane gas escaping from the icy dwarf planet's atmosphere, say scientists who solved the mystery behind the coloured region first spotted by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft last year.
During this manoeuvre, Chandrayaan-1 entered a much higher elliptical orbit around the Earth. The apogee (farthest point to Earth) of this orbit lies at 1,64,600 km while the perigee (nearest point to Earth) is at 348 km. In this orbit, Chandrayaan-1 takes about 73 hours to go round the Earth once.
India's first solar mission, if successful, will showcase ISRO's ability to explore the cosmos, explains Kumar Abishek.
Former President A P J Abdul Kalam lauded ISRO scientists for successfully launching the PSLV-C9 to put 10 satellites in orbit. "Though I have envisioned India to become a superpower by 2020, the attitude and the confidence of the youth, to conquer everything in the right spirit, would make the country a global leader and superpower within five years," Kalam said.
A fresh analysis of volcanic glass collected during the Apollo missions in the 1970s has revealed that the Moon's parched surface has water hidden beneath it, a major finding that dispels the notion that the Moon is dry.
A senior official at the Indian Space Research Organisation has candidly admitted that scientists miscalculated the temperature of the moon, which led to the early termination of the Chandrayaan-I mission last month.
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