<p>The CHandra’s Atmospheric Composition Explorer-2 (CHACE-2) experiment aboard Chandrayaan-2 orbiter will study in situ, the composition of the lunar neutral exosphere in the mass range 1–300
Since the beginning of the space age, astronomers have dreamed of putting telescopes and other instruments on the far side of the moon. Not only would that avoid all the distortions and disturbances caused by Earth's turbulent atmosphere, but equally important, the moon's mass would block the noisy torrent of radio signals emanating from Earth. Only in the moon's radio "shadow' could the farseeing radio telescopes envisioned for the future pick up the extremely faint signals left over from the early universe, signals that would otherwise be drowned out by the broadcast barrage from Earth. But placing astronomy equipment on the always far side of the moon was well beyond the capabilities of the Apollo programme, and no robotic lunar mission could do it either, which is why the telescopes were never developed. With NASA planning to send astronauts back to the moon sometime after 2019, those dreams of a radio telescope looking out through the galaxies from the protected side of the moon have been revived. The agency recently awarded two planning grants for research on the necessary technologies and on how to put them in place. The $500,000 grants to a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and to the Naval Research Laboratory will be used to flesh out ideas for designing folded-up radio antennas that would pop open after being dropped on the lunar surface, for transmitting the flood of data that the antennas could theoretically collect, and for taking advantage of the planned presence of astronauts on the moon.
India on Tuesday tested its K-15 submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) from a submersible pontoon launcher off Visakhapatnam, amid some indications that the test was
Ambitious space missions drawn up by ISRO's Advisory Committee After the Moon, it could be Mars before 2015 for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) if the ambitious space missions drawn up by ISRO's Advisory Committee for Space (ADCOS) up to the year 2020 are realised in the envisaged time frame. This was disclosed here by Prof. U.R. Rao, former Chairman of ISRO and currently Chairman of ADCOS, in his inaugural address at the four-day 15th National Space Science Symposium (NSSS-2008) which got underway on Tuesday. It was on the basis of the recommendations made by ADCOS that the first lunar mission Chandrayaan-1, which will be an orbiter-cum-impactor mission, and the multi-wavelength X-ray astronomical satellite ASTROSAT have been undertaken by ISRO. Chandrayaan-1, originally scheduled for an April launch window, is now postponed by a few months and will be launched by mid-2008. The mission is chiefly aimed at understanding the chemistry and mineralogy of the lunar surface. It comprises 11 instrument payloads, which include five indigenous experiments, two joint experiments of ISRO with external agencies and the remaining four wholly foreign. According to ISRO sources, four of the payloads have been totally integrated with the lunar satellite and the remaining are in various stages of integration. ASTROSAT is expected to be launched in 2009. ADCOS, Prof. Rao said, had recently constituted four major panels on Planetary Exploration, Astronomy and Astrophysics, Space Weather and Weather and Climate Science. In recent months the deliberations of these panels have resulted in the identification of candidate future scientific missions on the basis of which the Committee has drawn up a perspective plan up to the year 2020, that also includes programmes for the Eleventh Five Year Plan period 2007-2012, he said. The exercises of defining these missions are likely to be taken up in due course. The identified missions include Chandrayaan-2, which ADCOS envisages to be a lunar orbiter mission again but this time with the possibility of including a lander-rover and robotic instruments to carry out, if possible, in situ analyses of lunar samples. Studies related to this mission are already on and Chandrayaan-2 is expected to be launched by 2012. Prof. Rao, in fact, expected this to be followed by more lunar missions. Some other important future scientific missions that ADCOS has identified include: A Mars Orbiter, to be taken up in the time frame 2009-2015, for the exploration of Mars with regard to the effect of solar wind, studies of its surface magnetic field, and search for palaeo-water; Asteroid orbiter or comet fly-by during the time frame 2009-2017, with the near-earth asteroid as the primary target; Space-borne solar coronograph by 2012 in the visible and infrared. A twin-satellite mission is planned to probe the electromagnetic field of the near-earth space during 2008-2010; small satellites carrying primary payloads such as (a) a nadir-viewing multi-angle polarisation imager and multi-spectral sensor; (b) payload for measuring vertical distribution of aerosols; and, (c) IR spectrometer for measuring atmospheric trace gases by 2010. Besides the small satellite scientific mission solar coronograph mentioned above, several other small satellite missions have also been proposed for the period beyond 2010. As for the upcoming near-term scientific missions besides Chandrayaan-1, there is the Indo-Russian mission called RT-2, aimed at hard X-ray spectrometry and imaging, which will be flown aboard the Russian launcher Photon-Coronas and is scheduled be launched this year. The other is the Indo-Israeli mission called TAUVEX, a UV imaging satellite, which will be launched along with GSAT-4 aboard ISRO's launcher GSLV. This is also scheduled for launch in 2008. A dedicated Space Science Instrumentation Facility (SSIF) is also proposed to be established shortly as a separate wing of ISRO.
Seeking an ultimate vacation? Forget planet Earth. The time is fast approaching when you can go into space to see a sunrise and sunset every 90 minutes. A team of international researchers has predicted that space tourism will rocket into reality in this century and the "final frontier' could begin showing up in a number of travel guides by the year 2010. Till now, only a few multi-millionaires have been able to afford the current $ 20 million price tag to go up in a Russian rocket for a two-week stay at the International Space Station. But, according to the researchers, shorter and more affordable "suborbital' space flights, costing $ 80,000 per trip, will drive space tourism in the near term. "During these flights, a spacecraft reaches space, but it does not enter Earth's orbit. Suborbital trips are likely to become available to tourists by 2010-2015, while tourism in space hotels is on a longer trajectory, predicted to become a reality in 2025. "Passengers will enter a world that only astronauts and cosmonauts have experienced
New York: Astronomers at the University of Sussex claim to have calculated that the Sun will vapourise Earth in about 7.6 billion years unless our planet's orbit is altered. According to them, the Sun's slow expansion will cause the temperature on the surface of the Earth to rise
Astronomers claim to have discovered a rich diversity of at least 67 gravitational lenses around a number of massive elliptical and lenticular-shaped galaxies in the distant Universe, using the Hubble Space Telescope. The strong lensing produced by massive galaxies is much more common than the usual giant "arc' gravitationally lensed galaxies that Hubble has previously observed; but they are generally more difficult to find as they extend over a smaller area and have a wide variety of shapes, the NASA said. Gravitational lensing occurs when light travelling towards earth from a distant galaxy is magnified and distorted as it encounters a massive object. These gravitational lenses often allow astronomers to peer much further back into the early universe than they would normally be able to. The massive objects that create the lenses are usually huge clusters of massive galaxies. "We typically see the gravitational lens create a series of bright arcs or spots around a galaxy cluster. What we are observing here is a similar effect but on much smaller scale
WASHINGTON, FEB 21: A navy missile soaring 210 kilometres above the Pacific smashed a dying and potentially deadly US spy satellite and probably destroyed a tank carrying 450 kilograms of toxic fuel, officials said. Officials had expressed cautious optimism that the missile would hit the satellite, which was the size of a school bus. But they were less certain of hitting the smaller, more problematic fuel tank, whose contents posed what Bush administration officials deemed a potential health hazard to humans if it landed intact. In a statement late on Wednesday announcing that the Navy missile struck the satellite, the Pentagon said, "Confirmation that the fuel tank has been fragmented should be available within 24 hours.' It made no mention of early indications, but a defence official close to the situation said later that officials monitoring the collision saw what appeared to be an explosion, indicating that the fuel tank was hit. The USS Lake Erie, armed with an SM-3 missile designed to knock down incoming missiles
Experts have discovered that the Milky Way is twice as thick than previously believed. According to a report in ABC, the discovery was made by professor Bryan Gaensler from the University of Sydney and his team. The research team found out that the enormous spiral-shaped collection gas and stars is 12,000 light-years thick when seen edge-on, not 6000 as scientists previously thought. "This was quite a stunning result,' said Gaensler. "It was a bit of a shock to us. It's like walking out into your backyard and finding your tree is twice the size you remembered,' he added. The researchers made their discovery without high-tech equipment or powerful telescopes. Instead, they downloaded publicly available data from the internet and carefully analyzed it.
Scientists have developed the mother of all laser beams
Washington: American warships are moving into position to try to shoot down an out-of-control spy satellite as early as Wednesday before it tumbles into the Earth's atmosphere, Pentagon officials said here on Tuesday. Armed with two specially modified interceptor missiles, the
