Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams has taken over the command of the International Space Station, becoming the second woman in history to do so, even as a three-member crew of the Expedition 32 returned safely to earth, wrapping up a mission lasting more than four months.
A Chinese unmanned spacecraft headed off to space on Tuesday for the country's first docking mission, paving the way for the establishment of China's first space station by 2020 to rival Mir, the space lab being operated by Russian and American astronauts.
What hinders the exploration program is a lackadaisical approach to space research and development by the policymakers, says Chaitanya Giri.
Its duties include experiments to further understand the lunar surface.
India's heaviest rocket ever is expected to take to the sky next January on an experimental flight whose later versions could be used to send humans on space missions.
India's advanced communication satellite GSAT-10, the heaviest built by the country, was launched in the early hours of Saturday on board Ariane-5 rocket from Europe's spaceport in French Guiana.
China's first woman cosmonaut and two of her colleagues returned to Earth on Friday after successfully accomplishing the country's first-ever manual space docking during a two-week mission, giving a boost to Beijing's efforts to build a space station by 2020.
India's Mars Orbiter Mission is slated to be launched on October 28 after a national committee of experts gave the go ahead for the Rs 450 crore ambitious venture after threadbare deliberations.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon denounced the launch and asked North Korea to halt its 'provocative actions' and return to compliance with its international obligations.
The launch is scheduled at 11.46 am on November 26, said the national space agency headquartered in Bengaluru.
Here is ISRO's SAC Director, Nilesh M Desai explains the crucial stage of soft landing.
"Since its injection into Earth's orbit yesterday, it has been functioning smoothly on the orbit. We are planning to perform orbit raising manoeuvres in the early hours of of Thursday," an Indian Space Research Organisation spokesman told PTI over phone.
The flight next year will see two astronauts orbit earth for five days, said China Daily.
Ahead of India's Mars orbiter's scheduled rendezvous with the red planet on September 24, ISRO is all set for the crucial fourth trajectory correction manoeuvre and test fire of the main liquid engine on the spacecraft on Monday.
He stressed the need to 'ignite the minds' and attract the imagination of young students in order to inspire them to make discoveries relevant to the World Space Vision 2050. Kalam called for all space-faring nations to optimise their space capabilities by contributing substantially in technology and resources.
It has been a half-century since Neil Armstrong stepped out of a lunar module and onto the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969 and declared, "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." The moment heralded a golden age of space exploration that was set in motion just eight years earlier in 1961, when United States President John F Kennedy promised before Congress to put a man on the moon before the decade was out. Here are some lesser-known facts about the historic first mission:
"It will take about five-and-half days for Chandrayaan-1 to get to the moon," officials said, adding that the probe will be in a 100 km polar orbit around the Moon.
The unmanned SpaceX capsule returned to earth on Monday after successfully delivering its first commercial payload to the International Space Station commanded by Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams.
Explaining the mission, the agency, NASA on Sunday said just as an impressionist artist makes an image from countless tiny strokes of paint, IBEX will build an image of the outer boundary of the solar system from impacts on the spacecraft by high-speed particles called energetic neutral atoms.
NASA plans to deploy mini-synthetic aperture radar and spectrometer with 0.3 micron to 0.9-micron capabilities in the Indian spacecraft for experiments.
Missile man and former President APJ Abdul Kalam on Sunday said the country is suffering from the 'fifth nation syndrome' as it is always the fourth or fifth nation to launch any mission like the space mission or nuclear programme.
Atlantis' flight path brought it over San Diego and just east of Los Angeles before it touched down at Edwards where it was greeted by fair skies and light winds.
The Mars mission should not have been a priority at this stage for India which, instead, ought to have devoted time and energy on getting its rocket operational again and give momentum to the human space flight programme, former ISRO chief G Madhavan Nair said.
NASA says SpaceX was conducting a test firing of its unmanned rocket when the blast occurred.
Speaking to PTI, Somanath said, "(The lander landed) perfectly in the intended site. The landing location was marked as 4.5 km x 2.5 km -- I think on that space, and the exact centre of that was identified as the location of landing. It landed within 300 metres of that point. That means it is well within the area identified for landing."
We did increase our probability of weather prohibiting a [Kennedy] launch to 60 per cent,
The world needs to wake up to this new dimension of war at sea and be prepared to face the 'unknown enemy' who have the advantage of attacking at their choice of location and time, cautions Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
As scientists of the Indian Space Research Organisation are decoding the data sent by Chandrayaan-1 from the moon, the space agency is confident that India's first lunar mission would reveal 'unexpected results and things'. "The data have been collected from unexplored area. We are well positioned with these data. We can tell the world that we have found many things, which no explorer has seen so far," Chandrayaan-I Project Director M Annadurai said on Saturday.
An ultra-violent film about violence, Kill's greatest accomplishment isn't its death count alone but to challenge our perception of violence, observes Sukanya Verma.
An Indian high commission diplomat was denied permission to travel to Lahore to set up the mission's stall at the ongoing South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation Trade Fair where all the other SAARC nations have their representation.
'You declare a date, time and place for the landing two months in advance and exactly at that moment, it touched on the moon.'
Indian space scientists will begin satellite integration for its moon mission Chandrayaan-1 this month to ascertain that the country's first-of-its-kind venture next year is on track.
Kareena Kapoor says that like any other Indian, she is also waiting 'with bated breath' for Chandrayaan 3 to land on the Moon's surface and she plans to watch the event with her children.
Godrej and some other firms are frustrated at what they say is the slow execution of projects and lack of government support, which are hampering India's efforts to compete with China and Russia as a cheaper option for launching satellites.
With an instrument on board India's lunar mission Chandryaan discovering water molecules on the Moon, scientists are now confident of harvesting water from the lunar surface in the future, which could help sustain lunar astronauts and even propel missions to Mars.
'If you shout at me, I will not take it.' 'If you jump on me and pounce on me or physically come too close to me, that's not acceptable.'
The US space agency will be looking for complete systems -- launchers, spaceships, mission operations and ground support -- to ferry astronauts to the InternationalSpace Station by the middle of the decade, The Daily Telegraph online reported.
"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.
The Mars Orbiter Mission may have sparked a debate on 'space race' between India and China, but former ISRO boss G Madhavan Nair says Beijing has already surged forward and is on course to have an upper hand in the field globally.
Antrix, ISRO's commercial arm, is eyeing 10% of the $357 billion global market.
