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| India-Pakistan |
| India takes giant step to the Moon |
| 2007-09-29 |
| India is planning to launch a locally built rocket as the country's first unmanned mission to the Moon next April, the head of the project said yesterday. Despite limited funding, the country's state-run Space Research Organisation operates an extensive space programme and intends to send an astronaut into space by 2014 and men to the moon by 2020. |
| Posted by:Seafarious |
| #13 "Mumbai, Ghandi Base here. The Mongoose has landed." |
| Posted by: Mike 2007-09-29 20:48 |
| #12 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKjFPpuK-Jo Helium 3 Superfluid flowing through ceramic |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2007-09-29 19:10 |
| #11 "When helium 3 combines with deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen) the fusion reaction proceeds at a very high temperature and it can produce awesome amounts of energy," Taylor told AFP. "Just 25 tonnes of helium, which can be transported on a space shuttle, is enough to provide electricity for the US for one full year," said Taylor, who is in the north Indian city of Udaipur for a global conference on moon exploration. Helium 3 is deposited on the lunar surface by solar winds and would have to be extracted from moon soil and rocks. To extract helium 3 gas the rocks have to be heated above 1,400 degs Fdegs C). Some 200 million tonnes of lunar soil would produce one tonne of helium, Taylor said, noting that only 10 kilos of helium-3 are available on earth. Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam told the International Conference on Exploration and Utilisation of the Moon on Wednesday that the barren planet held about one million tonnes of helium 3. "The moon contains 10 times more energy in the form of Helium 3 than all the fossil fuels on the earth," Kalam said. However, planetary scientist Taylor said the reactor technology for converting helium 3 to energy was still in its infancy and could take years to develop. |
| Posted by: john frum 2007-09-29 17:52 |
| #10 I haven't the foggiest idea why He3 is so valuable, but if it's that simple and that little would pay that much, they'd be government caliber stupid not to do. |
| Posted by: Mike N. 2007-09-29 17:25 |
| #9 Helium 3 is a superfluid. Cool the rock to the right temp and the He3 will flow out of it. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2007-09-29 15:40 |
| #8 Interesting. Are they hiring? I might be available. In five to ten years... |
| Posted by: Ex-Astronaut Lisa Nowak 2007-09-29 13:03 |
| #7 NASA's biggest two problems are first that they have a bad habit of reinventing the wheel. The second is that they have an aversion to the practical in favor of the esoteric. For these reasons, the next effective Lunar landing will be made by private enterprise. I am betting that it will be almost silly in its simplicity. A lander designed to scoop up dust, bake it to release the He3, then dump the remaining dust. It will need to move laterally maybe 200 feet while doing this, to get enough dust (He3 exists only in .01 ppm in Lunar dust.) Then it will leave most of the lander behind, with a smaller return vehicle carrying a few grams of He3 back to Earth. But that few grams will pay for the mission many times over. A sensible mission. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2007-09-29 11:48 |
| #6 Good for them. Its a shame NASA is too busy playing politics to do any space exploration. The shuttle is the worst thing to happen to us, because it sucked funds from all the other programs. Small manned shuttles and big cargo lifters are the way to go, and the guys behind that one lost that argument a long time ago to the politicians at NASA. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2007-09-29 10:11 |
| #5 Scientific Payloads Launch Vehicle |
| Posted by: john frum 2007-09-29 06:56 |
| #4 The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will launch its ambitious and maiden mission to the moon, Chandrayaan-I, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota on April nine next year. "We are looking for a launch on April nine," M Annadurai, Project Director of Chandrayaan-I said adding that a launch windows are available for the next two days in case the launch does not happen on that day. ISRO is racing to meet the deadline and plans to integrate all the 11 instruments, including six from foreign partners, on board the mission before the year end. "Two instruments one from the US and another from Bulgaria were integrated last week," Annadurai told PTI here. The two payloads which have been integrated are the moon mineralogy mapper, a joint project of Brown University and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Radiation Dose Monitor Experiment (Radom) from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Two more payloads for the lunar orbiter -- the Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar (mini-SAR), a joint project of Applied Physics Laboratory at the John Hopkins University and the Naval Air Warfare Centre, and SIR-2 from Germany's Max Planck Institute. The German payload will be first calibrated at ISRO's Space Application Centre at Ahmedabad before it is integrated with the main orbiter in next 15 days. The mini-SAR will be used to map the lunar polar ice and the data generated from it will help in estimating water content in the moon's polar region. Annaudurai said that there were very little chances of any change in the launch date. In event of a delay due to problems detected during the countdown, the launch may take place in the next two to three days. In case of more serious problems efforts will be to identify the slots every 14 days and the next probable launch could be on April 23, 2008, Annadurai said. "We want to make the Chandrayaan operational by July so that we get two full years for all the planned experiments," he said. On Chandrayaan-II, Annadurai said that ISRO would like to accommodate newer international partners in project. "We had selected the partners for Chandrayaan-I purely on merit of the space science expertise offered by them and that will be our criteria once again," Annadurai said. |
| Posted by: john frum 2007-09-29 06:48 |
| #3 Don't forget we claimed the moon a lot better than Russia claimed the ridge in the Arctic. I assume we have a passport office set up NASA? If not, why not? |
| Posted by: 3dc 2007-09-29 00:53 |
| #2 Twas tremorin' here on Guam for over 1/2 hour. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-09-29 00:29 |
| #1 Along with Russia, China, Japan, Euros, etc. D ***NG IT, EARTH > IN A GEOMAGNETIC STORM [G2-G4]; JAPAN/MARIANAS REGION [Saipan-Bonins] >7.4 - 7.7 QUAKE. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2007-09-29 00:28 |