Monday, September 6, 2010

Chandrayaan goes public

        September 6 2010

        What is the success rate of India's maiden mission to the moon, ``Chandrayaan-1?  While former Isro chief G.Madhavan Nair, who headed the space agency during the launch of ``Chandrayaan-1'' on October 22,2008, has repeatedly stated that 95 per cent of its scientific objectives were accomplished, according to another ex-Isro head U.R.Rao it ranged between 50 and 70 per cent. He even added that some of the payloads on board Chandrayaan-1 did not function properly. Which is correct? Is it by chance a clash of  egoes of two top space scientists? Even if it was 70 per cent, it is still good considering that it was after all the country's first flight to the moon. It was a challenge for our space scientists and engineers because they were flying into the unknown as far as India was considered. Let us not forget that it was the first time that an Indian spacecraft had flown into the deep space region. The maximum an Indian spacecraft has flown so far is 36,000 kms. In space exploration, set backs in the first or even second attempts are inevitable and not viewed as failures, but only as a learning experience. How many Nasa and Russian missions have flopped?

      Ninety or 70 per cent,--whatever it may be---details about the functioning of the Chandrayaan payloads would be known when a huge amount of scientific data including rare images of the moon will be made public by the end of the year. This has stated by a top scientist of Isro's Ahmedabad-based Space Application Centre B.Gopala Krishna. He said ``people will have free access to the huge data obtained from our first moon mission on a web portal that will be launched by this year end.''

      He said: ``The data has been split into two seasons, with the first dealing from November 2008 to February 2009 and the second from March to August 2009. The first season data will be archived by year-end and the second by mid-2011,'' he said. A total of 26 gigabytes of data and images will be uploaded after archiving the first season.

      The archives will include chemical and mineral mapping, high resolution three-dimensional mapping and topographical features. One definately eagerly looks forward to seeing the quality of the three-dimesional maps because according to U.R.Rao the terrain mapping camera on board Chandrayaan-1 mapped only 45 per cent of the lunar surface because of power problems.

     Krishna said that though a dedicated portal will have a catalogue of the data, specific information will be made available for those pursuing research in space exploration. About 70,000 images are being studied which were relayed to the deep space network at Byalalu near Bangalore by 10 scientific instruments on board Chandrayaan-1--the 11th payloads-the indigenous Moon Impact Probe crash landed in the south pole region of the moon on November 14,2008. Access to the data is being made public when what is known as the lock-in period for the principal investigators to analyse will end by December.

      Isro scientists have used the planetary data system developed by Nasa for the preservation and utilisation of the archived information. Krishna said that Isro was also in the process of generating a topographical and a minerological atlas of the moon from the data. According to him a detailed mapping of the moon's minerology and topography will pave the way for further research possibilities.

      Added Krishna: ``We will prepare an atlas of the moon with latitude, longitude, colours of areas, ice water, minerals and terrain from the sheets of topography in the data.''

      ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

      From the moon to the sun. Nasa has begun the development of a mission to visit and study the sun closer than even before. The mission is called ``Solar Probe Plus,'' and is slated for launch before 2018.

      According to Nasa, the small car-sized spacecraft will plunge directly into the sun's atmosphere approximately four million miles from the surface and explore a region no other spacecraft has visited. There are five science experiments on board.

      The experiments are specifically designed to solve two key questions of solar physics---why is the sun's atmosphere so much hotter than the sun's visible surface and what propels the solar wind that affects earth and our solar system.

      As the spacecraft approaches the sun, its revolutionary carbon-composite heat shield must withstand temperatures exceeding 2550 degrees Faherenheit and blasts of intense radiation.



      

     
   

  

No comments:

Post a Comment