Chandrayan-1 moon mission

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m mittal
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by m mittal »

edit.
Last edited by Rahul M on 28 Sep 2009 14:25, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: alien conspiracy theory ? no way !
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by sumishi »

Err... guys! Please refrain from posting links to conspiracy theory sites here. I just wanted to know the credibility of that article in India Daily from the doyens of this forum, since they have been associated with India related space technology and history for quite some time.
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by Kailash »

juvva wrote: -Power required by the rover ( you may have to make some assumptions here)
-size of the rectenna and its efficiency.
-size of the solar panel on orbiter
-What will be the revisit frequency of the orbit over the rover site.
-How much time will be available to transfer power in each orbit.
-How the microwave beam will be steered?
Good points. Couple more

- To continuously track of the rover by the orbiting craft to be able to steer the microwaves (what if the rover is completely powered down and we dont have its position?)
- Ensure the scattering of the wave is minimal - possibly using a maser/laser source.

for a space mission of this immense complexity, this just adds more points of failure. Making the rovers powered by nuclear reactors (or something available on the moons surface) is a better idea
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by Rahul M »

sumishi wrote:People, Just a query!

What do you know about the journalistic/editorial credibility of India Daily (http://www.indiadaily.com)? From what it appears in this article, ISRO guys know about extraterrestrial presence :eek: on the moon. I got this link for facebook's "Final Frontier"

[url]http://[/url]
complete crackpot source.

DO NOT touch it with a barge pole.
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by sumishi »

Rahul M wrote:
sumishi wrote:People, Just a query!

What do you know about the journalistic/editorial credibility of India Daily (http://www.indiadaily.com)? From what it appears in this article, ISRO guys know about extraterrestrial presence :eek: on the moon. I got this link for facebook's "Final Frontier"

[url]http://www..com/editorial/20879.asp[/url]
complete crackpot source.

DO NOT touch it with a barge pole.
Thanks, Rahul :)

I tried to search out the information of the site owners, but seems they are registered through "Domain by Proxy, Inc" and remain anonymous. Stretches their credibility to the extreme :x
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by Sanjay M »

disha wrote:
Sanjay M wrote: Plus, ISRO could point to such beamed power technology as being useful for Earthly applications of receiving power beamed down from space.
Not sure, but you will have to take the case via a college. Note that ISRO is under tremendous pressure to incorporate all sorts of payloads for C-II. It is like 543 MPs wanting a ride in a bus meant for 54 persons and one driver. And all 543 MPs are not Gandhians :lol:

Kailash wrote:
juvva wrote: -Power required by the rover ( you may have to make some assumptions here)
-size of the rectenna and its efficiency.
-size of the solar panel on orbiter
-What will be the revisit frequency of the orbit over the rover site.
-How much time will be available to transfer power in each orbit.
-How the microwave beam will be steered?
Good points. Couple more

- To continuously track of the rover by the orbiting craft to be able to steer the microwaves (what if the rover is completely powered down and we dont have its position?)
- Ensure the scattering of the wave is minimal - possibly using a maser/laser source.

for a space mission of this immense complexity, this just adds more points of failure. Making the rovers powered by nuclear reactors (or something available on the moons surface) is a better idea

Hi gents, thanks for the responses - here are mine:

Rectenna efficiency = ~100%

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave_ ... ansmission

As has been pointed out, nuclear power supplies like Radio-isotope Thermal Generators may require heavy shielding, which takes up valuable payload mass. A rectenna is just a lightweight wire, with near-100% conversion efficiency. The beaming device could simply be a magnetron, or infrared LED. You're right though - to beam down power, you'd probably want a satellite in lunar-stationary/lunar-synchronous orbit, which would be sitting stationary overhead. But perhaps a polar orbit would ensure frequent fly-bys, since the rover would be at the pole. Or else use a separate nanosat. The beam would have to be aimed using gyros and/or star-sensor, or homing signal from the rover. With microwaves or infrared you could expect a certain amount of spread, so you might not have to hit it exactly. As shown by CY-1's overheating problem, I think there'd be more than enough energy hitting the orbit to ensure it can beam some to the rover.

Even if you don't include an orbital beaming system on this mission, you could still build the rectenna wire into the solar panels of the rover, because it won't add any weight penalty and it would simply use the same electronics as the solar panels to feed its power to the rover. Eventually, if CY-3 comes along and has a beaming setup, the rover would still be there on the surface, waiting to be sent into the shadowed areas.
I think the rover needs to be over-designed to last beyond its planned lifespan, just like Spirit and Opportunity were, because it's always possible to extend such missions.

I'd also like to see something advanced used for the solar cells. I've read that nanotubes are showing good performance in photovoltaic applications:

http://www.photonics.com/Content/ReadAr ... leID=39826


Since payload capacity already seems to already be constrained, even though it's GSLV-Mk3, then the govt needs to approve development of a Mk4 or Mk3XL version to provide extra lift capacity for lunar missions.
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by Sanjay M »

disha wrote:How would you know that in that 10 seconds the rover has rolled into an irrecoverable crater? It at least needs to have enough smarts to resist commands that may put it in jeopardy. One has to prepare for a situation where a command is issued to move 1 meter forward, the rover does not respond, the driver issues the command again and the rover actually got two commands and has moved 2 meters forward. That is one scenario I could think off. With the rover driver not getting a feedback immediately, there are multiple things one has to train and prepare for.
You could just ensure the rover has sufficiently far-seeing sensors to provide an event-horizon wider than 10 seconds. Then simply issue commands for movement within that event horizon.
As for the issue of irresponsible commands, you'd just have to safely plan accordingly.
On another note, this is the time to involve the IITs and IIScs and start developing some cutting edge technologies. If you are going there with 2 rovers, incl. a russian one, go with the cutting edge for yours!
It seems to me that the Russians are carrying the brunt of the mission, since they are the ones landing it on the Moon. I don't believe CY-1 was a "space coolie" merely carrying the instrument packages of other nations, but this time for CY-2 it does mainly look to be a Russian payload, given that the crucial lander component will be Russian-made and controlled, due to our complete inexperience in the field. We are ambiguously downplaying the Russian role for our own reasons of pride, but it seems to me that we're mainly going to be transporting a Russian mission to the Moon, which they will be landing and also piloting once it touches down. I don't know how we will piggyback our extra rover onto the Russian lander, if it's already designed to carry just the one main Russian rover.
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by Amber G. »

About "extra terrestrial presence" on the moon, any presence on moon (or any place other than Earth for that matter) by definition, IMO would be extra-terrestrial.

Also Thanks Rahulji for asking people to desist with petty OT stuff.
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by Sanjay M »

ISRO has said it would like to shrink the size of the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter in order to accommodate the added weight of the extra rover. I'd say one way to do this without sacrificing much capability, would be to use an ion-engine to propel the spacecraft, and also to use it for station-keeping in lunar orbit. The mass of Ion engines and the propellant supply are typically quite a bit less than for regular chemical engines and their propellant.

The European Space Agency has already used ion propulsion to send the Smart-1 probe to the Moon, which shows that the technology itself is quite suitable for lunar missions. This technology is also more reliable and robust than chemical engines, since it is solid-state and uses no mechanical moving parts. ISRO could use one of the newer high-thrust ion propulsion technologies, like DS4G:

http://www.physorg.com/news9786.html

http://www.jumpingelectrons.com/Astrono ... Engine.asp

Image


I think Indians are perfectly capable of building such propulsion systems, and using something like this on Chandrayaan-2 would enhance the mission capability by lightening the payload to allow for more instruments to be carried. Such a propulsion system could again be used later for ISRO's mission to Mars, or to the asteroid belt, or to the outer planets.

As an added boost to performance, I would even suggest use of a C60 fullerene propellant, which has a high molecular weight as well as a low ionization energy, to produce even still better thrust.
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by sanjaykumar »

I think Indians are perfectly capable of building such propulsion systems,

Yes the paragraph on ion propulsion in the ISRO yearly report certainly would be a clue. As also reading newspapers,


ISRO working on spacecraft engine
From Kalyan Ray,DH News Service,Shillong:

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has developed the first prototype of an ion-propulsion engine that can take unmanned spacecraft to the outer solar system.




As an added boost to performance, I would even suggest use of a C60 fullerene propellant, which has a high molecular weight as well as a low ionization energy, to produce even still better thrust

http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve ... 6502001157 Experimental investigation of Fullerene propellant for ion propulsion. September 1993

I guess another great idea confirmed.
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by pgbhat »

The "Water on the Moon" Hoopla, Part 2: The murkier part of the story
excerpts
At yesterday's press briefing, the director of NASA's planetary science division, Jim Green, caused the gathered photographers to collectively twitch their trigger fingers when he held up a tablespoon, saying that all the water in all the lunar samples ever brought to Earth wouldn't fill that tablespoon. So: the Moon -- or at least the surface, where astronauts can grab samples and spectrometers can see spectral features -- is dry.
And I'm sad to say the story gets even more complicated than that: the amounts of water and hydroxyl observed on the Moon may even vary with time. This wrinkle arose from the Deep Impact data, presented yesterday by Jessica Sunshine. She explained that Deep Impact just happened to take data on the Moon twice in June of this year -- once on June 2, once on June 9. That one-week separation between the two observations corresponds to one quarter of a lunar day. Parts of the lunar surface that were just going into morning sunlight on June 2 were at solar noon on June 9. And areas that were under high noon illumination on June 2 were seeing the sun set on June 9. Jessica found that the strength of the water absorption feature was strongly dependent upon the time of solar day:
If this observation is real, it implies that there is more water in the lunar surface at sunrise and sunset than at noon -- that water moves around the surface on very short timescales, the time scale of the lunar day. It may even be destroyed (photo dissociated) under the noonday Sun, and created anew at dawn and dusk.
There's two principal ways in which the Moon can get more water. One is easy to explain: comets bring it in. Comet impacts aren't very common but the Moon is old, and as Roger Clark points out in his paper, there's probably been enough water delivered to the Moon from comets over the last 2 billion years to cover the whole globe to a depth of half a millimeter. But this is not a process that would replenish lunar water over the course of a lunar day.

Jessica advanced a different explanation for how you get water on the Moon: she suggested that water might be continuously generated on the lunar surface when solar wind protons bombard mineral grains. Lunar minerals contain lots of oxygen; it's one of the most abundant elements on the Moon. Solar wind protons can make water by reacting with those minerals. This is not at all a new idea; it's been around for a very long time.

Which isn't to say it's a process that's well understood. Carlé said: "We have to understand the physics of this silicate surface and the vacuum around it, which is awash in solar wind particles and micrometeorites. The physics is just in its infancy." And Jessica said: "There's a lot of unknowns that we need to work out." And finally Rob Green, who's the project instrument scientist for M3, said "There are many more questions today than we had six months ago." Which I think is an amusing encapsulation of the paradoxical nature of scientific "advancement" -- every time we learn something trying to answer one question, what we learn makes us ask ten more questions!

But if there's a process operating on the airless Moon, producing detectable amounts of water every lunar day, that's important, because, as Jessica said, "We should see the same effects on any oxygen-rich body with no atmosphere. This includes Mercury as well as asteroids."

Well, cooooool.

So there could be water on airless bodies all over the solar system. Finding water in space is desperately important for human exploration, because water is so danged heavy and we need so much of it that launching enough for long-lasting human habitation of any place, whether it be the Moon or an asteroid or what have you, quickly becomes prohibitively expensive. If you're talking about setting up permanent human occupation anywhere off of Earth, you have to have a way to create or extract water in space. So does this amount of water discovered on the Moon represent enough to support permanent human habitation?

Maybe. I wish I could be more definite, after all this discussion. But it's not very much water, and it would not be easy to extract. On the other hand, it's there, and that's something that we didn't know about before yesterday. Water is there in the lunar rocks. More importantly, the data from VIMS and Deep Impact seems to suggest that it's not just at the poles, it's also at lower latitudes. So if it becomes a priority for us of Earth to establish a permanent human colony on the Moon, we at least know now that there is water there to be extracted, if we choose to learn how to do so, and that we wouldn't necessarily have to build our lunar base next to a permanently shadowed region at one of the poles. That's a big step.
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by Kailash »

China claims highest resolution map of the moon
The map's spatial resolution -- measured by the distance of two features within an image that can be clearly defined -- is 500 meters.
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by sumishi »

I cannot comprehend the logic of LCROSS. With the MIP of Chandrayaan - I, as well as the NASA instrument on board, having confirmed the presence of water on the moon, what's with this "moon shattering" dual impacts which NASA is going to effect in October for confirming water? Is this the only way to do whatever they are attempting? :-?
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by Sanjay M »

LCROSS will crash the upper stage of its Centaur rocket into a crater on the Moon which has recently been found to have the highest neutron-absorption signal (an indicator of hydrogen).
They hope to scan the debris cloud kicked up by the impact for signs of water ice. The goal is to confirm the presence of bulk ice on the Moon, which nobody has found yet.
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by harbans »

With the MIP of Chandrayaan - I, as well as the NASA instrument on board, having confirmed the presence of water on the moon, what's with this "moon shattering" dual impacts which NASA is going to effect in October for confirming water?

M3 confirmed water only in the top 2 mm of lunar soil in many regions. There may be more water deeper down in the polar regions specially and crashing a rocket will analyze deeper than 2mm. They've selected a region where there's a good chance of finding water. By crashing anbd observing spectral signatures of the emission from deeper they will be able to confirm water in that region.
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by Sanjay M »

sanjaykumar wrote:I think Indians are perfectly capable of building such propulsion systems,

Yes the paragraph on ion propulsion in the ISRO yearly report certainly would be a clue. As also reading newspapers,


ISRO working on spacecraft engine
From Kalyan Ray,DH News Service,Shillong:

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has developed the first prototype of an ion-propulsion engine that can take unmanned spacecraft to the outer solar system.




As an added boost to performance, I would even suggest use of a C60 fullerene propellant, which has a high molecular weight as well as a low ionization energy, to produce even still better thrust

http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0094576502001157 Experimental investigation of Fullerene propellant for ion propulsion. September 1993

I guess another great idea confirmed.
Hey, thanks for that link - I'd never seen it before! 8)

This made me wonder - shouldn't buckyonions be even better candidates as propellant, since they have many layers, each of which would be influenced/polarized by the ionization/polarization of the adjacent layers?

Furthermore, I'd also read about Silicon fullerenes, like Si60, which not only have even higher molecular weight, but also have high magnetic spin properties as well.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/jour ... 4/abstract

Wouldn't it be possible to use Silicon fullerenes as propellant under Lorentz force(electrical+magnetic), for even better thrust performance?
I wonder what would be the main challenges or obstacles to doing so?
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by Bade »

Kailash wrote:China claims highest resolution map of the moon
The map's spatial resolution -- measured by the distance of two features within an image that can be clearly defined -- is 500 meters.
Seeing is believing...so show us first before making the claims. :mrgreen:
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by Gagan »

Did the chandrayaan map the moon fully and build the 3D image? The images of the M3 showed that the strips were not complete ~ 90% only.

The chinese are about to have another egg on their faces with the 500m claim since Chandrayaan was supposed to have a 5m resolution image.

Added later: I guess this news is mostly for domestic consumption for the chinese masses. Keep 'em entertained with visions of chinese success in science and tech. Just like our babooze have kept us entertained these 10 years wrt the TN.
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by animesharma »

I guess, as last heard...the 3D images will need some processing before published, also these high rez images of moon won't be put up online for public consumption.(May be later,selectively).
Actually, ISRO lacks mechanism to share these data with intended user.
For now, the data will be in lockdown state and will remain so for sometime. ISRO will probably share its data with research institutes, and some for PR.
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by Gagan »

High res images of the moon! :eek: Perish the thought. GoI is not even allowing ISRO to upload high res images of earth on Bhuvan - which seems to have slowly died its natural death, unheard and unseen.
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by sumishi »

Gagan wrote:High res images of the moon! :eek: Perish the thought. GoI is not even allowing ISRO to upload high res images of earth on Bhuvan - which seems to have slowly died its natural death, unheard and unseen.
So the results of our tax-money funded enterprise gets locked in a vault. Great to know that!! :roll:
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by Bade »

They could have done a better job with more text on what those graphs mean for the common man. How does it help the media with just those spectral shapes to write meaningful text.
http://www.isro.org/news/pdf/ISRO-PRESS-BRIEFING.pdf
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by harbans »

Ina email-interview with a news agency, Detlef Koschny, European Chandrayaan-1 project scientist, said though the space craft's life was cut short, the mission was a "fantastic success."

India's lunar mission had carried three scientific payloads from the European Space Agency (ESA).

According to Koschny, the European teams were "much excited" about the results they achieved. "I think (the) Indian press should stop trying to put ISRO down. You should rather acknowledge the fantastic achievements your space agency did," he said, listing many of the achievements.

"You sent a spacecraft to the moon and entered a low lunar orbit -- a very high challenge which is already a fantastic success," Koschny said.

"Secondly, all scientific instruments were commissioned and worked flawlessly. The data came down, over a distance of about 400,000 km and it was put together into images, atomic counts etc."

"To have a spacecraft survive in such an environment for such a long time is not simple -- you should congratulate them (ISRO) for this," Koschny said.

For good measure he added that all principal investigators in Europe felt as he did.

He also said ESA scientists' appreciation had been communicated to ISRO in a statement by Stas Barabash, principal investigator of the Sub KeV Atom Reflecting Analyser (SARA), one of the three ESA payloads on board Chandrayaan-1.

The SARA experiment was expected to reveal the surface composition of the moon and associated magnetic anomalies by studying the interaction of solar wind with the moon's surface.

"The SARA team is very pleased with the data received. The experiment fulfilled its scientific objectives. SARA considers Chandrayaan-1 as a full success. The team not only received science data but also demonstrated for the first time the feasibility of neutral atom imaging of the solar wind-surface interaction," Koschny said.

In a ringing endorsement, the letter of appreciation further added that if the SARA team were invited again to build an instrument for a 10-month Chandrayaan mission, "we would, with no hesitation, agree to participate".

The transparent management system of the Chandrayaan-1 mission also came for praise from European scientists. "The management scheme involving Indian and non-Indian research group developing together a scientific instrument was extremely successful," the letter said.
http://www.domain-b.com/aero/space/spac ... aan-1.html
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by Ameet »

On a lighter note, Daily Show clip with Jon Stewart and Aasif Mandvi on the Indian moon mission and water discovery

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-s ... space-naan
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by Sanjay M »

Ameet wrote:On a lighter note, Daily Show clip with Jon Stewart and Aasif Mandvi on the Indian moon mission and water discovery

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-s ... space-naan
Actually, I was more delighted to see Ron Paul invited onto the show again, to speak about his book.
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by Prasanth »

Gagan wrote:Did the chandrayaan map the moon fully and build the 3D image? The images of the M3 showed that the strips were not complete ~ 90% only.

The chinese are about to have another egg on their faces with the 500m claim since Chandrayaan was supposed to have a 5m resolution image.

Added later: I guess this news is mostly for domestic consumption for the chinese masses. Keep 'em entertained with visions of chinese success in science and tech. Just like our babooze have kept us entertained these 10 years wrt the TN.
I am afraid we didn't finish that map. If we did, we would have a 5M resolution 3D map. As of now, China has the only 3D map with a miserable 500m resolution in the world. Having said that, China does have the technology to make <1m resolution satellites, and mapping applications usually do not need high resolution details. I checked their ChangE satellite, it does have a resolution of around 120M.
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by ss_roy »

Talking about strange structures on the moon.. have you ever heard about the lunar 'shard' and lunar 'tower'. The guy who promotes them, and much more BS, is a bit of a kook.. :lol:

But those two structures are real, in that there is something very peculiar about their shape, dimensions and appearance.

http://www.vgl.org/webfiles/lan/L3-84m.htm

They are found near Sinus Medii (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinus_Medii)

The original 'shard' picture can be seen at:

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/lunar ... 84_med.jpg

It does cast a shadow in the right direction.
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by harbans »

I am afraid we didn't finish that map. If we did, we would have a 5M resolution 3D map. As of now, China has the only 3D map with a miserable 500m resolution in the world.

I'm afraid CY has indeed sent all the data generated by TMC for complete 5 m resolution 3-D mapping of the Moon. It takes some time like it has for Chang'e data to be pieced together. At a 200 km high orbit with poor resolution, Chang'e map data won't be any better than the clementine mission one. It would have been completed last year too for the Chinese. But it's taken them also a year to create the 3 D map if indeed it's true. Same with CY. It will take several months to create a 3-D map from the TMC data. The Chinese won't have to put out the 500 m resolution map once CY takes there one out really. :mrgreen:
Last month, G Madhavan Nair, Chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), had expressed satisfaction with the successful collection of data about the moon by Chandrayaan, country”s maiden lunar mission.

Nair told the Ninth convocation of the International Institute of Information and Technology at Bangalore that the tracking and detection of several factors by Chandrayaan are important steps in mapping the mineralogical composition of moon”s surface which in turn would enable further study in its origin and evolution.

I think I am happy to say that Chandrayaan has been completely successful in collecting all the data what we wanted. First was the three dimensional of the lunar surface, also getting the mineral content of the surface and then trying to use the extra instruments,” said Nair.

“All this went on very well and we are more or less very happy that the mission is complete,” he added.
http://blog.taragana.com/n/radio-contac ... ro-153475/
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by Gagan »

So the discovery of water on the moon is not the end of the chandrayaan-1 story. There is the highest ever resolution image of the moon @ 5m resolution to follow. The mineralogy map and data from the MIP is also waiting to make a splash!

ISRO is very filmy indeed:
Aahista aahista, chun chun ke maaronga!
Zor ka jhatka dheere se lagey
:P
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by Prasanth »

harbans wrote:I am afraid we didn't finish that map. If we did, we would have a 5M resolution 3D map. As of now, China has the only 3D map with a miserable 500m resolution in the world.

I'm afraid CY has indeed sent all the data generated by TMC for complete 5 m resolution 3-D mapping of the Moon. It takes some time like it has for Chang'e data to be pieced together. At a 200 km high orbit with poor resolution, Chang'e map data won't be any better than the clementine mission one. It would have been completed last year too for the Chinese. But it's taken them also a year to create the 3 D map if indeed it's true. Same with CY. It will take several months to create a 3-D map from the TMC data. The Chinese won't have to put out the 500 m resolution map once CY takes there one out really. :mrgreen:
Last month, G Madhavan Nair, Chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), had expressed satisfaction with the successful collection of data about the moon by Chandrayaan, country”s maiden lunar mission.

Nair told the Ninth convocation of the International Institute of Information and Technology at Bangalore that the tracking and detection of several factors by Chandrayaan are important steps in mapping the mineralogical composition of moon”s surface which in turn would enable further study in its origin and evolution.

I think I am happy to say that Chandrayaan has been completely successful in collecting all the data what we wanted. First was the three dimensional of the lunar surface, also getting the mineral content of the surface and then trying to use the extra instruments,” said Nair.

“All this went on very well and we are more or less very happy that the mission is complete,” he added.
http://blog.taragana.com/n/radio-contac ... ro-153475/

I would have been very happy if this was true. Read in between the lines, they did get the 3D images, but it's just not complete, last I read was only at 70%. It is just another Babu tongue twister. :-?
"TMC and HySI payloads of ISRO have covered about 70 per cent of the lunar surface, while M3 covered more than 95 per cent of the same and SIR-2 has provided high-resolution spectral data on the mineralogy of the moon", ISRO said.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaa ... cquisition

M3 is by the States and SIR-2 is by EU. They too only managed to get 95% data. Btw, not all images were 5M resolution, some were even at 100M resolution. Trust me, if we did manage to finish the job, you wouldn't see ISRO being so humble.
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by harbans »

^^Thanks for the link. The original is here:

"TMC and HySI payloads of ISRO have covered about 70 per cent of the lunar surface, while M3 covered more than 95 per cent of the same and SIR-2 has provided high-resolution spectral data on the mineralogy of the moon", ISRO said.
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Chand ... d_999.html

However this maybe in the context of 5m resolution mapping. CY did 3400 orbits around the pole. Almost every 2 hour it orbitted the moon. With a 20 km swathe strip, it would have completed mapping much before that figure. However even if that is correct, need'nt worry about the mapping part. LRO is mapping the moon at a resolution better than CY too. So long as we have derived scientific and mineral knowledge and accurate imaging of polar regions, terrain mapping of 70% of the moon is not a bad deal. But this certainly conflicts with Mr Nairs statement that they've completed the 3D mapping of the moon..
“I think I am happy to say that Chandrayaan has been completely successful in collecting all the data what we wanted. First was the three dimensional of the lunar surface, also getting the mineral content of the surface and then trying to use the extra instruments,”
So the Space daily link may be a misquote if Mr Nair is so categorical in stating that they have ALL data and completed 3-D mapping..
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by harbans »

An article on US bureacracy almost blowing away the M3 inclusion on CY..
t is not much publicised outside Isro, but the fact is that India had to keep the designs of Chandrayaan open for a long time just to accommodate huge delays by American bureaucracy.

The Moon Mineralogy Mapper, or M3, one of the devices behind the water on the Moon findings - was literally the last of the 11 instruments to be accommodated on board the Chandrayaan mission.

This is not the first time that a high-profile Indo-US space dream has nearly died early because of what some in India see as the unbending attitude of US bureaucracy.

In 2006, India's dreams of launching a Moon mission in conjunction with America's Boeing Corporation were shattered soon after the deal was announced.

It was aborted not because Isro and Boeing were unwilling to become partners, but because of huge delays in getting export clearance from the US state department.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8281480.stm
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by Bade »

http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/feb252009/492.pdf

This one from the low impact journal :-) has some relevant details in the introduction section.

Due to limitations on keeping the variation in the illumination a minimum the prime imaging is limited to +/-60 degrees and is also limited to a 2 month period every six months. Note that imaging the polar regions is not limited to these periods.

So they may have got a full season with part of the rest. It is not trivial looks like to estimate the coverage completed in the ten months. But the poles are probably better covered maybe even a 100%.

The swath width (20m) is less than the distance between adjacent orbits at the equator at 32.6km. But the repeat period must be in days, so a 60 day imaging period should have more than a couple of revisits of all regions in the +/-60 degree equatorial band.
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by sumishi »

ss_roy wrote:....

They are found near Sinus Medii (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinus_Medii)

...
Regarding that big image of Sinus Medii (from the above link at wikipedia) at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... -clem1.jpg -- Is ejecta stuff from a meteoric impact "fluff" like material?

In that Sinus Medii image, the left half of the graphic appears to have a lot of ejecta "fluff" covering the moon surface, and you can actually see through them -- check out the left side of the crater's cirumference at the top left corner of the picture.

Do ejecta blankets look like this - fluffy and "see-throughs?" :?:
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by ss_roy »

That is an interesting question.

While I do not believe in conspiracy theories, I cannot help but ask myself questions about the origin of certain features on the moon- such as mile high spires and translucent ejecta blankets. Even if these features are natural, we should try to understand more about their formation.
Do ejecta blankets look like this - fluffy and "see-throughs?"
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by Sanjay M »

This is paranoid nonsense. There are no artificial anomalous structures on the Moon, or else they'd be in the world headlines. Just paranoid imagination.
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by ss_roy »

Sanjay M,

The 'shard' on the moon is real... It may be 'natural', but what process formed it?

There are many more anomalous spires (as opposed to true mountains) on the moon, often over a mile high, that cannot be reconciled with our understanding of the moon's geological history.

http://media.photobucket.com/image/zond ... ond-3a.jpg

They are just too peculiar not to be studied.
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by Rahul M »

could be large meteorites embedded in lunar surface ?
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by harbans »

^^ Meteorites on impact would have been vaporized almost totally on impact. I doubt large embedded structures of meteorites would remain.
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Re: Chandrayan-1 moon mission

Post by Rahul M »

even on moon ? without any atmosphere to burn it down and a much lower gravitational pull ?
even on earth many meteorites survive as small pieces after impact, where the structure is already weakened and eroded by the atmosphere and the impact velocity is that much higher.
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