“I suggested to both ISRO and NASA to work on future mission of Chandrayaan-II using moon surface robotic penetrator during my recent visit to California Institute of Technology in US, where NASA scientists presented the findings of Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) to Indian scientists,” Kalam told students during an interaction today.

The missile man was here to inaugurate the national science seminar on ‘Chandrayaan: Promises and Concerns’ for school students, organised by the National Council of Science Museum. He said more validations are being carried out by the scientists on India’s Moon Impact Probe (MIP) about the presence of water on lunar surface.

Kalam told students that he had also suggested space scientists to make spacecrafts weighing one-kilogram by 2050 to cut costs and bring it down to USD 2,000 from USD 20,000.

India’s own device MIP on ‘Chandrayaan-I’ detected the presence of water on lunar surface, a finding confirmed by NASA which also had an instrument on board the craft.

The MIP while descending from Chandrayaan-I to moon, picked up strong signals of water particles giving a clear indication that hydroxil (OH) as water molecules are present on the surface. 

Source: PTI

‘Moon water is more precious than gold,’ an Indian space scientist told IANS, declining to be named.
He said the presence of water makes a lot of difference for future explorations. ‘For instance, we may not have to carry water from earth,’ he added.
However, he said that a whole lot of tests have to be done to determine whether the water is consumable by humans.
The immediate fallout of the current find on the Chandrayaan-2 mission slated for 2012/2013 is that the moon lander that would go there can land precisely near the moon water and conduct the necessary tests there.

According to the scientist, the data from other equipments carried by Chandrayaan-1 are being studied and the result will be announced in due course of time.

‘It includes the data generated by the Indian equipments on Chandrayaan-1. Peer reviews of data generated by Indian equipments and the findings are on,’ he remarked.

The spacecraft carried 11 scientific instruments built in India, the US, Britain, Germany, Sweden and Bulgaria.

The Indian scientific payloads were terrain mapping camera, hyper spectral imager, lunar laser ranging instrument, high energy X-ray spectrometer and moon impact probe.

The overseas payloads were Chandrayaan-1 X-ray spectrometer, near infrared spectrometer, sub-keV atom reflecting analyser, miniature synthetic aperture radar, moon mineralogy mapper and radiation dose monitor.

Former chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) K. Kasturirangan had categorically said that ‘India’s lunar mission is not lunatic mission’ when controversy raged on the necessity of such a mission. Now his views have turned prophetic

IANS

Speaking to IANS over phone from ISRO’s launch centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, M.Y.S. Prasad, associate director, Satish Dhawan Space Centre said: “Preparations are already on for the launch of GSAT 4 — the communication satellite using the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV). The rocket assembling process has started.”

The first stage of GSLV with four strap-on motors has been assembled and assembling of the second stage is to start soon.

The third stage — cryogenic stage — will come from ISRO’s Thiruvananthapuram facility, he said.

“GSLV will blast off from the second launch pad with its third stage fitted with an India built cryogenic engine thereby making the country absolutely self reliant in building the bigger rocket,” S. Sathish, ISRO’s director of publications and public relations, told IANS over phone from Bangalore.

For all the five earlier GSLV missions, ISRO had used Russian cryogenic engines.

Last December, the indigenously developed cryogenic upper stage engine passed the flight acceptance test with the engine tested for 200 seconds.

The development of cryogenic engines involves mastering materials technology, operating rotary pumps and turbines which run at 42,000 revolutions per minute (RPM).

Weighing around two tonnes, GSAT 4 will carry a multi-beam Ka-band bent pipe and regenerative transponder and navigation payload in C, L1 and L5 bands. The satellite can guide civil and military aircraft.

GSAT 4 will also carry a scientific payload, TAUVEX, comprising three ultra violet band telescopes developed by Tel Aviv University and Israel space agency (ELOP) for surveying a large part of the sky in the 1,400-3,200 A wavelengths.

Meanwhile, ISRO officials are gearing up the next week’s PSLV launch carrying the 960 kg Oceansat 2 and six nano satellites totalling around 20 kg.

“We conducted the pre-launch rehearsal — all activities that have to be carried out ten hours before the actual launch — starting at 2 a.m. Saturday and completed at 12.30 p.m. Everything went off well,” said Prasad. He said the actual 49-hour countdown process will start Monday 8 a.m. The rocket will fly at 11.51 a.m. Wednesday.

According to Satish, Oceansat 2 will be placed in a sun-synchronous orbit 720 km above the earth.

Prasad added: “Oceansat 2 will cover the whole earth as the coverage strip will be moving since it is not geostationary satellite. The orbit is designed in such a way that the satellite will cross the Equator at 12 noon near India.”

Along with Oceansat 2, four overseas Cubesats each weighing 1 kg will be ejected from the rocket, while the two Rubinsats each weighing 8 kg will orbit attached to the rocket’s fourth stage, he added.

This will be the second time that ISRO will launch a cluster of nano satellites. In 2008 ISRO — launching its cartography satellite (CARTOSAT-2A) and Indian Mini Satellite (IMS-1) — also sent up eight nano satellites and set a world record of maximum number of satellites sent up in a single launch.

“The increased launch of nano satellites from foreign countries is expected to propel Indian universities to follow the footsteps of Anna University to build satellites,” Satish remarked.

Chennai-based Anna University became the first Indian university to build a small satellite Anusat which ISRO launched in April this year.

Source: IANS