Mangalyaan: ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

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sanjaykumar
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by sanjaykumar »

Well there are some such maps out already, we'll see what MOM adds.


Image
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by Prem »

SaiK wrote:who is other guy down the cliff entering inside a kave kamplex then? :)
Any Instrument on MOM trying to listen to Aazzan on Mars?
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by Mort Walker »

Amber G. wrote:
Mort Walker wrote:

On question No. 2. IIRC, the deviation in final velocity for Mars orbit was +/- 0.2 m/s. This should help you calculate CEP for guidance.
?
I am no expert on this (and honestly do not know how CEP is generally defined.. ).. so take if FWIW ..
-Trajectory calculation is much harder where there is air, eg on earth, than outside in vacuum.
- For Guidance and control the accurate navigation, and speed of on board computer is more critical to continuously "adjust" the end point.
- For MOM, the required accuracy (at a distance of about half a million Km or the order of 200 Km. (They expected and data suggest that they could easily have done that with less than 50 Km)
- Accuracy (initial without mid- correction) of the order of 1 in 10^8 is quite impressive . (This is of the order of 10 cm, for 10,000 Km - as some one said, it is like making a hole-in-one when the golf ball is hit from Mumbai to a target in Delhi!)[/quote]

1. Trajectory calculation is much harder for re-entry in a relatively thick atmosphere. The best you could do is calculate where you expect to be in terminal phase at re-entry at about 7500-8000 m/s.
2. Precise guidance and control has been demonstrated with MOM when final velocities are within 0.5 m/s of expected. I don't think anyone should now second guess Agni series capability.
3. Yes, the accuracy is quite impressive. But, isn't it more like the order of 1 in 10^9?
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by Vayutuvan »

Sanjaykumar: hats off for your harping on methane and water. I looked up a few wiki pages and now a convert to going outwards rather than in. Next stop Titan with its methane lakes. The only problem is how would the methane rocket work if no oxygen is found? Finding water is no solution (no pun intended). What good is methane going to do for propulsion and/or energy source for maintaining human settlements intially? Any biochemical pathways involving GM plant biomass that can produce enough Oxygen to go from Mars to Titan? The very long term plan and a reasonable solution is to setup Mars and Titan colonies since earth would not have room (I mean resources - not physical space per se) for the ever growing longer lived population in a couple of centuries provided nothing catastrophic happens and humankind advance at the same rate it has been for the past half a century or so. Hopefully we are able to develop renewable energy sources without the baggage of environmental pollution that cola and nuclear are beset with. In that case we have may be a couple of centuries. Otherwise all bets are off.
Last edited by Vayutuvan on 01 Oct 2014 00:12, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by bharats »

MOM is circling Mars
India’s Mars Orbiter has made it to the top, but is it a one-hit wonder?
By Vasudevan Mukunth | Posted September 23, 2014
Posted in: Featured, Physical Science Blog

http://scienceline.org/2014/09/mom-is-circling-mars/

After a 650-million kilometer journey, pampered with uncharacteristic attention, the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) put itself into orbit around the red planet. That means for that only for the second time a space agency has put a spacecraft around Mars on its first attempt (NASA took two attempts to get so far; the Soviet Union, three; ESA’s Mars Express got there on its first try in 2004).

Now that it’s delivered a payload into orbit around a neighboring planet, the Indian Space Research Organization, ISRO, has convinced the world it can also plan and execute long-term missions and the associated logistical nightmares. The achievement has important consequences for scientific and political reasons, but we must be careful not to overstate this capability.

Until the Mars mission, ISRO functioned as a FedEx-for-space, launching the scientific instrument cargo, or scientific payload, of other countries, and Indian telecommunication and meteorological satellites into orbit around Earth using largely its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rockets. Since 1993, PSLV rockets have launched 65 satellites in 25 launches, including India’s Moon and Mars missions.

MOM’s success has helped India show up China and assert itself as a regional space-power that not only markets itself as a low-cost launch hub, but also as a country that can set the agenda for regional cooperation.

On a more cautious note, on the other hand, the mission draws the Indian government’s attention to the scientific payloads India can currently launch. The PSLV series of rockets are built to carry payloads of up to about 1,500 kg to the geostationary transfer orbit, which is as high as MOM needed to go before switching to a heliocentric orbit. This places direct limits on what kinds of instruments ISRO can or can’t send up.

For instance, while all of MOM weighed 1,500 kg, its scientific payload was just 15 kg. In comparison, the NASA Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) space probe that got into orbit around Mars on September 21 weighed 2,454 kg and its scientific payload, 65 kg. So if mission scopes are to expand, and India is to make the best of the foreign interest, its scientific aspirations and technological capabilities will have to expand, too.

This can be good news for Indian cosmologists and astrophysicists who, like many other scientists in India, have been clamoring for a hike in research and development funding since the early 1990s.

Second, the mission was executed in a really short span of time. A feasibility study was conducted in 2010, the federal approval received in 2012, and the payload launched a year later, all on a feeble budget of about $74 million. That’s one-ninth the cost of the MAVEN space probe, $670 million. This bespeaks its original purpose being a demonstration of the perseverance of ISRO personnel, especially considering everything else about the mission was a cobbling together of well-tested components. That MOM had a scientific payload on board seems incidental even if its observations will soon be the center of (much less) attention.

So this would be the time to talk about the launch vehicle program that ISRO’s future really depends on: the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) rockets. Unlike with the PSLV, the first GSLV launch came in 2001, offset in time by a decade because certain Russian commitments essential to the program didn’t come through. That meant that by 2014 the PSLV program had ten more years than the GSLV program did to stabilize itself, and become as reliable as it is.

The GSLV is expected to be able to carry at most 1,000 kg more to the geostationary transfer orbit than the PSLV. The difference – in capability as well as complexity – lies with the engines. The PSLV has a four-stage engine with alternating solid and liquid stages. The GSLV has a three-stage engine of solid, liquid and cryogenic stages. The cryogenic stage has been the stumbling block because it had to be indigenously developed and its first successful flight was only in January this year.

Hopefully the program will become more reliable in the next decade, and that’s when India’s claims about being a space-superpower can take off, too. Even if it has launched a spacecraft to Mars, the payload limit and the lack of an inclusive scientific agenda still stand in the way of taking full advantage of scientific interest and infrastructure on the ground. Going ahead, untying this knot is what will keep from reducing MOM’s achievement to an exhibition of ego rather than scientific temperament.

This story has been corrected on September 24, 2014, to reflect that ISRO was not the first space agency to get a Mars orbiter right on its first try. ESA did that first in 2004 with its Mars Express.
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by Sonugn »

bharats wrote:MOM is circling Mars
This story has been corrected on September 24, 2014, to reflect that ISRO was not the first space agency to get a Mars orbiter right on its first try. ESA did that first in 2004 with its Mars Express.
And it takes a genius to find that esa belongs to a continent whereas isro to a country, unless the author is into south asia cr@p
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by member_28714 »

Sonugn wrote:
bharats wrote:MOM is circling Mars
This story has been corrected on September 24, 2014, to reflect that ISRO was not the first space agency to get a Mars orbiter right on its first try. ESA did that first in 2004 with its Mars Express.
And it takes a genius to find that esa belongs to a continent whereas isro to a country, unless the author is into south asia cr@p

We should not be upset when they nitpick. It should instead please us.
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by member_28108 »

Sonugn wrote:
bharats wrote:MOM is circling Mars
This story has been corrected on September 24, 2014, to reflect that ISRO was not the first space agency to get a Mars orbiter right on its first try. ESA did that first in 2004 with its Mars Express.
And it takes a genius to find that esa belongs to a continent whereas isro to a country, unless the author is into south asia cr@p
There is also another issue .The Mars Express was launched by a Soyuz rocket. One of the modes of failure is achieving the high argument of Perigee that is required for Mars trajectory insertion. Many have failed even during launch so Mars Express is not a start to end single agency or country attempt.
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by member_23370 »

Another poser who thinks with his double digit IQ he just has some useful advice for ISRO scientists.
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by NRao »

1) "The only problem us how would the methane rocket work if no oxygen?"

check out NASA's Project Morpheus. A recent CNN report suggests that this project expects to make/find O2 and Methane in space and keep going.

2) On who got a sat to orbit Mars on first attempt, it should not matter that ESA is an intergovernmental organization.
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by Comer »

:(( :(( MOM has to have inclusive agenda onleee, must be secular onlee
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by sattili »

I have enough of these foolish Indics writing articles downplaying India's achievements.

Following are my comments posted on that blog:
6. There are few things which need correction in your article. First India is not a Federal structure, so the approval is not given by Federal government. Correct term would be Central government. I am really surprised how quickly the Indian origin folks forget their roots (or wont remember what government structure is followed in India) and rather cozy up to US way of talking.

Second and most important, “Certain Russian commitments didn’t materialize”???? Not surprised that you have selective amnesia about how US blocked the tech transfer and purchase of cryogenic engines from Russia on the pretext that it will violate MTCR (Missile Technology Control Regime) treaty. Can anybody tell which missile in the world uses Cryogenic Engines? And to ask about MTCR treaty’s application it self – Recent news about Saudi Arabia purchasing DF21 missile from China – why didn’t US block it since its clear violation of MTCR???

GSLV has 2 versions of the rocket, your statement that payload will double for GSLV holds good for first version. The second or also called as Mark III can actually launch 4.5ton category satellite’s on par with rest of the world. Read up more about the topic before you jump at the keyboard to write such myopic article.
, September 30, 2014 at 10:15 am

7. and hey……ESA’s Space Express is launched on a Russian Soyuz rocket, which you conveniently ignored before proceeding with your Macaulayite preaching.

So ISRO is the first Space agency that successfully launched and orbited a Mars mission in the fist attempt…now beat that.
, September 30, 2014 at 10:24 am
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by sanjaykumar »

My interest in methane is more biological. Is there life other than on Earth? If so, is it homologous to ours? Is it carbon and water based? Is there any novel biochemistry? These are tremendously exciting issues.

Rocket fuel, not so much. Of course there is no absolute requirement for O2. CO, HCN, hell Fe+3 can be used with methane to provide an reaction with favourable enthpy.
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by Amber G. »

I think some people are getting upset over what others are saying, but it is okay to listen what they say.. The following is written extremely nicely so allow me to post it for the record in this dhaga..

This will balance out some of the comments (and some times bad-mouthing) about our leaders (including PM/ex PM), our institutions (including IIT's ), our friends and well-wishers (including NASA, and USA - (including Americans of Indian origin)).

This shows, how mangalyaan has inspired many, including world leaders and a special bonus, it also even happens to mention Indian Institute of Technology in a positive way.. :mrgreen:

The writers are Prime Minister of India and President of USA. It's an op-ed in Washington post:

Link:
चलें साथ साथ Forward together we go
A renewed U.S.-India partnership for the 21st century

By Narendra Modi and Barack Obama September 30 at 8:00 AM

Narendra Modi is prime minister of India. Barack Obama is president of the United States.

As nations committed to democracy, liberty, diversity and enterprise, India and the United States are bound by common values and mutual interests. We have each shaped the positive trajectory of human history, and through our joint efforts, our natural and unique partnership can help shape international security and peace for years to come.

Ties between the United States and India are rooted in the shared desire of our citizens for justice and equality. When Swami Vivekananda presented Hinduism as a world religion, he did so at the 1893 World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago. When Martin Luther King Jr. sought to end discrimination and prejudice against African Americans, he was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent teachings. Gandhiji himself drew upon the writings of Henry David Thoreau.

As nations, we’ve partnered over the decades to deliver progress to our people. The people of India remember the strong foundations of our cooperation. The food production increases of the Green Revolution and the Indian Institutes of Technology are among the many products of our collaboration.

Today our partnership is robust, reliable and enduring, and it is expanding. Our relationship involves more bilateral collaboration than ever before — not just at the federal level but also at the state and local levels, between our two militaries, private sectors and civil society. Indeed, so much has happened that, in 2000, then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee could declare that we are natural allies.

After many years of growing cooperation since, on any given day, our students work together on research projects, our scientists develop cutting-edge technology and senior officials consult closely on global issues. Our militaries conduct joint exercises in air, on land and at sea, and our space programs engage in unprecedented areas of cooperation, leading us from Earth to Mars. And in this partnership, the Indian American community has been a vibrant, living bridge between us. Its success has been the truest reflection of the vitality of our people, the value of America’s open society and the strength of what we can do when we join together.

Still, the true potential of our relationship has yet to be fully realized. The advent of a new government in India is a natural opportunity to broaden and deepen our relationship. With a reinvigorated level of ambition and greater confidence, we can go beyond modest and conventional goals. It is time to set a new agenda, one that realizes concrete benefits for our citizens.

This will be an agenda that enables us to find mutually rewarding ways to expand our collaboration in trade, investment and technology that harmonize with India’s ambitious development agenda, while sustaining the United States as the global engine of growth. When we meet today in Washington, we will discuss ways in which we can boost manufacturing and expand affordable renewable energy, while sustainably securing the future of our common environment.

We will discuss ways in which our businesses, scientists and governments can partner as India works to improve the quality, reliability and availability of basic services, especially for the poorest of citizens. In this, the United States stands ready to assist. An immediate area of concrete support is the “Clean India” campaign, where we will leverage private and civil society innovation, expertise and technology to improve sanitation and hygiene throughout India.

While our shared efforts will benefit our own people, our partnership aspires to be larger than merely the sum of its parts. As nations, as people, we aspire to a better future for all; one in which our strategic partnership also produces benefits for the world at large. While India benefits from the growth generated by U.S. investment and technical partnerships, the United States benefits from a stronger, more prosperous India. In turn, the region and the world benefit from the greater stability and security that our friendship creates. We remain committed to the larger effort to integrate South Asia and connect it with markets and people in Central and Southeast Asia.

As global partners, we are committed to enhancing our homeland security by sharing intelligence, through counterterrorism and law-enforcement cooperation, while we jointly work to maintain freedom of navigation and lawful commerce across the seas. Our health collaboration will help us tackle the toughest of challenges, whether combating the spread of Ebola, researching cancer cures or conquering diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria and dengue. And we intend to expand our recent tradition of working together to empower women, build capacity and improve food security in Afghanistan and Africa.

The exploration of space will continue to fire our imaginations and challenge us to raise our ambitions. That we both have satellites orbiting Mars tells its own story. The promise of a better tomorrow is not solely for Indians and Americans: It also beckons us to move forward together for a better world. This is the central premise of our defining partnership for the 21st century. Forward together we go — chalein saath saath (चलें साथ साथ ).
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by Amber G. »

Interesting to see this old post in brf ...
Amber G. wrote: 2. The charge this auto-riksha charges is about the same (just a little higher) than MOM is spending..
(about 11 Rs/Km - Not bad if you ask me- for about 680Km - journey)
Similar thoughts were uttered by Modiji in New York:
India's Mangalyaan ride cheaper than auto, cost Rs 7 a km: Modi
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by arun »

^^^ That New York Times cartoon appeared under the caption "India joins the space club.":

Image

Cartoon appears on this page of the NYT:

India’s Budget Mission to Mars

Calling the cartoon racist is a complete over reaction by Sharanya Haridas, author of the piece in Huffington Post.
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by Sagar G »

I find it racist and I am neither surprised by the reaction of the rednecks. I am simply putting forth some info that I found and would let people decide about it by themselves.
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by member_23370 »

LoL who cares about the NY post? The yankees are still sore they have had to pay 10 times more and will eventually lose the space race. Let them cry about it. They will soon be begging us to send there astro-nuts to mars.
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by Comer »

This MOM twitter account is a nice outreach program by ISRO.

https://twitter.com/MarsOrbiter/status/ ... 9711036416
What sorcery is this? Get your 3D glasses to look at Mars the way I do!
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by member_22733 »

Excuse me, but please explain to this ignorant soul (maybe in the OT thread) on how calling it racist is an over reaction?
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by SSSalvi »

This forum topic is under the category:

Military Issues & History Forum
Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Do the recent posts fall in this category?

=======

From a different forum

In fact, Mars Express made ESA the first nation/ region to succeed at its first attempt. Both Japan (Nozomi) and China (Yinghuo 1) have attempted
Mars probes which failed. So this is a major first for India, in Asia’s “mini space race”.
To this a reply from MOD
MOD MODE: Reminder to all members that rule 1.2 will be enforced, and posts that violate that rule will be deleted without warning.

Mod hat off. Let's please celebrate achievements here on their own merits instead of making essentially futile comparisons of the "first", "better", etc. variety, which never seem to accomplish anything but raising tensions.

BOLD letters is my emphasis
Last edited by SSSalvi on 30 Sep 2014 22:47, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by Sagar G »

^^^ FYKI western reaction to MoM launch has been documented earlier in this thread as well.
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by NRao »

Formation of India in Mars:

Image
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by SagarAg »

Nice information on identification of areas on the Mars pikture sent by @MarsOrbiter
mom_goes_to_mars_full_disk_view_of_the_red_planet

Image

Holy. Ares!

THAT is a full-disk image of Mars taken by India’s Mars Orbiter Mission, or MOM. It was just released this morning and shows nearly an entire hemisphere of the planet.

It’s gorgeous. There’s so much to see! North is to the upper left (roughly the 11:00 position), and the pole looks like it’s covered in a cloudy haze [Update (Sep. 29, 2014 at 17:40 UTC): Ah, according to my friend and fellow science writer Carolyn Collins Petersen, that's a dust storm brewing there.]. The huge, lighter-colored region just to the right and above center is called Arabia Terra, a 4,500-kilometer stretch of uplands that is one of the oldest terrains on Mars. It’s hard to tell from this wide-angle shot, but it’s heavily eroded and covered with craters.

Just below it is a long dark feature called Terra Meridiani (“Meridian Land”; though you could fancifully call it “Middle Earth”). The rover Opportunity is there, still roaming around and poking at the rocks there. This whole area shows evidence that is was once under water.
Nestled in the northern part of Terra Meridiani is the crater Schiaparelli, which is more than 460 km across! That’s huge, far larger than the crater left by the dinosaur-killer impact here on Earth. Straight up from it in Arabia Terra you can also see the crater Cassini (also more than 400 km wide), and to the right, just inside the dark region called Syrtis Major, is the crater Huygens, which is about the same size as Schiaparelli. The astronomers Cassini and Huygens studied Saturn, which is why the Cassini probe is named what it is, and the lander probe it sent to the moon Titan is named Huygens. Those astronomers really get around.

I could go on and on; you can see Hellas Basin as a smooth, butterscotch-colored area to the lower right just on the edge, and the ices of the south pole at the bottom. There are craters galore, and all sorts of wind-eroded areas that so many scientists will happily spend the rest of their lives studying.

But for me, right now, what makes me sigh in awe is the overall perspective of this picture. We’re seeing the entire face of the planet here, a perspective we don’t always get from our probes, sent to study Mars in detail. And the added touch of it not being fully lit—you can see the day-night line, called the terminator, cutting across the planet to the upper left—really drives home that what we’re seeing here really is an entire world, a huge expanse of territory just calling out for us to explore and understand.

There’s a lot of solar system out there to look at, and it fills me with joy to know we’re doing just that.
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by Vayutuvan »

sanjaykumar wrote:My interest in methane is more biological. Is there life other than on Earth? If so, is it homologous to ours? Is it carbon and water based? Is there any novel biochemistry? These are tremendously exciting issues.

Rocket fuel, not so much. Of course there is no absolute requirement for O2. CO, HCN, hell Fe+3 can be used with methane to provide an reaction with favourable enthpy.
Venus has some Methane too. What I gather from Wiki is that it may be not as much as on Mars or Titan. Is it too hot for life to survive? Ther emust be an optimum reaction rate.

By the way I looked up Harald Urey. I did not hear that name before you mentioned it here. Quite visionary in non-(bio)chemist's view. Are there groups working on creating life ab initio from "chemical soup"? Is the composition of that "primordial soup" even known?
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by Amber G. »

matrimc wrote: By the way I looked up Harald Urey. I did not hear that name before you mentioned it here. Quite visionary in non-(bio)chemist's view. Are there groups working on creating life ab initio from "chemical soup"? Is the composition of that "primordial soup" even known?
Yes, Urey was very well known among even common people here in US. He won Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of deuterium, but was a hero for his role in Manhattan project - he was the one who found the way to enrich uranium (diffusion method) which was the primary method used in early days. He was also a "big shot" known in public for his role in first lunar missions.. (headed the group which analyzed the moon rocks)
(Small tidbit - his grandson - a good physicist in his own right - was/is my son's guru)

Coming back to CH4 - Few very interesting tidbits...

- First flyby to Mars, caused a stir, because the first time it "discovered" (in mid-60's) gas other than CO2 on Mars. It boldly predicted that it was methane. (This was announce within hours of first photo/spectroscopic reading they got).

- They were WRONG. (It was embarrassing that they misinterpreted simple spectrum lines). It took them a few days to correct it.

- The corrected conclusion was - CO2 (in dry ice form).
- It was only in 2003/2004 small quantities of CH4 (a few parts per billion) were discovered.
- There are many theories about from where CH4 may come. (There must be a constant source to keep the trace amount there).So is it from biological sources, volcanoes, dust-devils, meteorites etc.(or a combination of all).

(The processes of Methane storage/ production / destruction are not yet understood -- apart from obvious questions - is it created by biological or geological processes, are still to be answered -- MOM may shine new light on this)
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by Amber G. »

Are there groups working on creating life ab initio from "chemical soup"? Is the composition of that "primordial soup" even known?
Lot of work was done in Cornell in late 70's...A really big shot Prof Bishun Narain Khare. (He died a year ago) and his group...

(Carl Sagan talked a lot about him )
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by member_22733 »

There was one guy who created an artificial "cell" using a drop of hydrophobic fatty acid in warm water and even managed to make it consume energy and expel waste products, just like a cell does. Of course it has no DNA/nucleas to create proteins and hence no ability to reproduce or repair itself.
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by sanjaykumar »

Is it too hot for life to survive?

The usual answer is 'yes'. But.....


Venusian atmospheric temperature is about 460 degrees celsius, high enough to break some moecular bonds. But interestingly pressure is about 90 bar on the surface. Life is resourceful, perhaps even Earth proteins would survive there. Pressure temperature plots of protein denaturation suggest a complex interactive mechanism/s. To further complicate matters, protein tertiary structures are dependent on hydrophobic drive which may also be affected by salinity, pH, particular ions/solutes as well as pressure and temperature and intra- and inter-polypeptide stabilisation. In addition one would need a description of micro-environments, eg crater walls to temperatures in gaseous vortices etc. Life is tenacious. I would not be too surprised. And all this is assuming Earth-type biochemistry.


One way to answer this is a through a selection pressure experiment where microorganisms able to survive incrementally non-Earth like conditions are selected. Of course extreme Earth environments abound with pressure-, cold-, salt-, heat-tolerant microbes. I do not know if protein (DNA) sequences have been compared from thermal vent associated deep water microbes with their non-thermal vent deep water living counterparts. I predict the former may have genes more similar to their terrestrial (surface) counterparts.
Last edited by sanjaykumar on 01 Oct 2014 02:49, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by member_22733 »

^^^ They found bacterial life near the volcanic trenches. Water is so acidic and hot there that anything "biological" would supposedly dissolve, but life happily exists.

Discoveries like this is what makes most exobiologists research extremophile-microbes instead of "normal" larger organisms.
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by Vayutuvan »

AmberG: As usual thanks. Probably I should ask you to assume my Thanks for all the previous and all future pointers. :)

As for Prof. Khare I did hear his name before, but did not remember the context.
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by SaiK »

SSSalvi wrote:This forum topic is under the category:

Military Issues & History Forum
Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission
now having s3 said that, here is the trivia:
http://www.isro.org/mars/challenges.aspx

go to the last para, last sentence, and tell me how that is applicable to indic mil prog. :)

hint: nfu
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

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matrimc wrote:
sanjaykumar wrote:My interest in methane is more biological. Is there life other than on Earth? If so, is it homologous to ours? Is it carbon and water based? Is there any novel biochemistry? These are tremendously exciting issues.

Rocket fuel, not so much. Of course there is no absolute requirement for O2. CO, HCN, hell Fe+3 can be used with methane to provide an reaction with favourable enthpy.
Venus has some Methane too. What I gather from Wiki is that it may be not as much as on Mars or Titan. Is it too hot for life to survive? Ther emust be an optimum reaction rate.

By the way I looked up Harald Urey. I did not hear that name before you mentioned it here. Quite visionary in non-(bio)chemist's view. Are there groups working on creating life ab initio from "chemical soup"? Is the composition of that "primordial soup" even known?
There have been a lot of studies wrt production of the primordial soup or to put it more correctly chemical evolution of life.

You would have heard about Urey's experiment but forgotten about it. It is there in every high school biology school book.
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by Amber G. »

matrimc - Thanks.

Meanwhile, we talked about NASA-ISRO Mars Joint Working Group, a few pages ago, and chief of isro said to wait for Modi to announce the details ..

This is an excerpt from Modi/Obama statement (from White House site:)
8)
U.S.-India Joint Statement
...High Technology, Space and Health Cooperation

Fundamental science and high technology cooperation has been a critical pillar of the strategic partnership, the two leaders confirmed, and they looked forward to renewing the Science and Technology Agreement in order to expand joint activities in innovative technology. The Prime Minister welcomed the United States as a partner country, for the first time, at India’s annual Technology Summit in November 2014. In addition, they committed to convene the ninth High Technology Cooperation Group (HTCG). They plan to launch new partnerships to source and scale innovation for the benefit of citizens in both countries and to harness innovation to solve global development challenges.

The President welcomed India’s contribution and cooperation on high-energy physics and accelerator research and development with the U.S. Department of Energy. The President thanked the Prime Minister for his offer to have U.S. institutions partner with a new Indian Institute of Technology.

The leaders committed to partner on the Digital India initiative, with the goal of enhancing digital infrastructure, deploying e-governance and e-services, promoting industry collaboration, and digitally empowering India’s citizens. The President welcomed India's proposal to establish the Global Initiative of Academic Networks (GIAN, or Knowledge) under which India would invite and host up to 1,000 American academics each year to teach in centrally-recognized Indian Universities, at their convenience.

The two leaders exchanged congratulations on the successful entry into orbit of their respective Mars missions, which occurred two days apart. They welcomed the establishment and planned first meeting of the NASA-ISRO Mars Joint Working Group under the U.S.-India Civil Space Joint Working Group. The leaders also look forward to the successful conclusion of a new agreement to support the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, to be launched in 2021.


<snip>
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by Bade »

No news on the Indian LIGO participation and approval for site selection. The new government has to decide soon isn't it. This would have been a great opportunity to mention it.

As for HEP and accelerator physics India will have to partner with China as the center of gravity of HEP program is likely to shift further east and away from the USA over the next decade. LBNE is the sole program that the US has on offer to India to participate in and I see no takers for the INO program from the US side.

Added:
China plans world's largest supercollider
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

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prasannasimha wrote:You would have heard about Urey's experiment but forgotten about it. It is there in every high school biology school book.
prasannasimha: Unfortunately, when I was in high school (and studied in Telugu medium till intermediate and that too one school per year and in one year two schools), all books (and majority of the teachers) were uninspiring, biology, though continued till 10th class, was almost done with by 7th class for composite math students. My interest is mostly in Bioinformatics, and computational biology and biological computation. But then I think the last one is not really a viable alternative to General Purpose Computers but certainly has merit as an embedded computing devices into into micro/nano-bio-electro-mechanical systems compute some very specific and simple albeit important functions.

Probably we should start a thread in Science and Tech forum for inter-disciplinary science research generally in the world and specifically in India with no politics/policy/religion of any kind. I might do it in a few days with strict guidelines and immediate reporting to Mods of any infringement of the guidelines happens.
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

Post by SagarAg »

Image

NASA-ISRO SAR Mission (NISAR) Website

Image

us-india-to-collaborate-on-mars-exploration-earth-observing-mission
September 30, 2014
RELEASE 14-266
U.S., India to Collaborate on Mars Exploration, Earth-Observing Mission

In a meeting Tuesday in Toronto, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and K. Radhakrishnan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), signed two documents to launch a NASA-ISRO satellite mission to observe Earth and establish a pathway for future joint missions to explore Mars.While attending the International Astronautical Congress, the two space agency leaders met to discuss and sign a charter that establishes a NASA-ISRO Mars Working Group to investigate enhanced cooperation between the two countries in Mars exploration. They also signed an international agreement that defines how the two agencies will work together on the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, targeted to launch in 2020.

“The signing of these two documents reflects the strong commitment NASA and ISRO have to advancing science and improving life on Earth,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “This partnership will yield tangible benefits to both our countries and the world.”

The joint Mars Working Group will seek to identify and implement scientific, programmatic and technological goals that NASA and ISRO have in common regarding Mars exploration. The group will meet once a year to plan cooperative activities, including potential NASA-ISRO cooperation on future missions to Mars.

Both agencies have newly arrived spacecraft in Mars orbit. NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft arrived at Mars Sept. 21. MAVEN is the first spacecraft dedicated to exploring the tenuous upper atmosphere of Mars. ISRO’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), India’s first spacecraft launched to Mars, arrived Sept. 23 to study the Martian surface and atmosphere and demonstrate technologies needed for interplanetary missions.

One of the working group’s objectives will be to explore potential coordinated observations and science analysis between MAVEN and MOM, as well as other current and future Mars missions.

“NASA and Indian scientists have a long history of collaboration in space science,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA associate administrator for science. “These new agreements between NASA and ISRO in Earth science and Mars exploration will significantly strengthen our ties and the science that we will be able to produce as a result.”The joint NISAR Earth-observing mission will make global measurements of the causes and consequences of land surface changes. Potential areas of research include ecosystem disturbances, ice sheet collapse and natural hazards. The NISAR mission is optimized to measure subtle changes of the Earth’s surface associated with motions of the crust and ice surfaces. NISAR will improve our understanding of key impacts of climate change and advance our knowledge of natural hazards.

NISAR will be the first satellite mission to use two different radar frequencies (L-band and S-band) to measure changes in our planet’s surface less than a centimeter across. This allows the mission to observe a wide range of changes, from the flow rates of glaciers and ice sheets to the dynamics of earthquakes and volcanoes.

Under the terms of the new agreement, NASA will provide the mission’s L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR), a high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid state recorder, and a payload data subsystem. ISRO will provide the spacecraft bus, an S-band SAR, and the launch vehicle and associated launch services.

NASA had been studying concepts for a SAR mission in response to the National Academy of Science’s decadal survey of the agency’s Earth science program in 2007. The agency developed a partnership with ISRO that led to this joint mission. The partnership with India has been key to enabling many of the mission’s science objectives.

NASA’s contribution to NISAR is being managed and implemented by the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

NASA and ISRO have been cooperating under the terms of a framework agreement signed in 2008. This cooperation includes a variety of activities in space sciences such as two NASA payloads -- the Mini-Synthetic Aperture Radar (Mini-SAR) and the Moon Mineralogy Mapper -- on ISRO’s Chandrayaan-1 mission to the moon in 2008. During the operational phase of this mission, the Mini-SAR instrument detected ice deposits near the moon’s northern pole.
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

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matrimc wrote:
prasannasimha wrote:You would have heard about Urey's experiment but forgotten about it. It is there in every high school biology school book.
prasannasimha: Unfortunately, when I was in high school (and studied in Telugu medium till intermediate and that too one school per year and in one year two schools), all books (and majority of the teachers) were uninspiring, biology, though continued till 10th class, was almost done with by 7th class for composite math students. My interest is mostly in Bioinformatics, and computational biology and biological computation. But then I think the last one is not really a viable alternative to General Purpose Computers but certainly has merit as an embedded computing devices into into micro/nano-bio-electro-mechanical systems compute some very specific and simple albeit important functions.

Probably we should start a thread in Science and Tech forum for inter-disciplinary science research generally in the world and specifically in India with no politics/policy/religion of any kind. I might do it in a few days with strict guidelines and immediate reporting to Mods of any infringement of the guidelines happens.
Please do saar, would be most obliged
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Re: Mangalyaan : ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission

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Probably we should start a thread in Science and Tech forum for inter-disciplinary science research
There is indeed a necessity for interdisciplinary science research. I usually give a lecture on how confusing things are when medical Doctors and Engineers/Physicists meet as a preliminary when I am asked to talk to engineering students. Just imagine how confusing the word 'Tensors" is when used by a medical doctor and an engineer/physicist.
What amused/shocked me the most was that I found engineering students fumble on this when I expected them to be masters at it (Basic Physics).I wonder why I was seeing this when my Son has to study it in his first sem in engineering. There seems to be a huge deficit in focusing on the fundamentals in many engineering programs from what I (with my limited knowledge of physics) can see.If what I talk seems like Greek and Latin to Engineering graduates, it is something of concern especially when we should become a destination for R & D.
I see the same trend even among medical graduates who forget to ask the question - why when reading
Failure to rigorously engage in basic sciences will be the downfall of any nation.
Last edited by member_28108 on 02 Oct 2014 00:05, edited 1 time in total.
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