Indian Space Research Organisation

NASA’s Found a Lost Spacecraft Orbiting Our Moon

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Lost in space.

 
An Indian spacecraft that lost contact with Earth eight years ago has been rediscovered orbiting the Moon.

NASA’s Earth-based radars have detected the signal of the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) tiny Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, which left Earth for the Moon’s orbit back in 2008, and was last heard from in August 2009.

You’d think it wouldn’t be that hard to find a spacecraft that we know is in orbit around our closest satellite, but it’s a lot trickier than it sounds.

It’s tough enough to accurately find space debris in Earth’s own orbit, and thanks to the lunar glare, optical telescopes are out when it comes to looking for lost objects around the Moon.

Not to mention that Chandrayaan-1 is only around 1.5 metres (5 feet) on each side, so from Earth it would be less than a tiny speck around the Moon.

There’s also the fact that our Moon is covered in regions called mascons, or mass concentrations, which have higher-than-average gravitational pull and have been known to tug a spacecraft out of orbit over time – sometimes even causing them to crash into the lunar surface.

So despite the fact that we last heard from Chandrayaan-1 while it was circling the Moon, after eight years of radio silence, there were no guarantees it was still there, and the orbiter had been classified as ‘lost’.

But NASA has used a new radar technique to discover the missing spacecraft, as well as showing that it could accurately pinpoint the location of NASA’s still-active Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).

 “Finding LRO was relatively easy, as we were working with the mission’s navigators and had precise orbit data where it was located,” said Marina Brozovic, a radar scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

“Finding India’s Chandrayaan-1 required a bit more detective work because the last contact with the spacecraft was in August of 2009.”

To figure it out, the team first came up with the best predictions of where Chandrayaan-1 might have ended up. According to where it was last heard from, their best guess was that it would be some 200 km (124 miles) above the Moon, in a polar orbit.

Based on that estimate, they then beamed microwaves towards the Moon’s north pole, around 380,000 km (237,000 miles) away, using a huge antenna at NASA’s Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California, and waited for them to bounce back.

The idea was that if any small spacecraft crossed the paths of these microwaves, they’d be able to detect them – similar to the way we can map the bottom of Earth’s oceans with radars.

And that’s exactly what happened – the team detected a small spacecraft crossing the path of the microwaves twice in around four hours, the same orbital period that Chandrayaan-1 was predicted to have.

They continued to listen in to the radars bouncing back from the spacecraft in order to get a better idea of its new orbit and position. Impressively, they found it had barely shifted course in the almost eight years it had been adrift by itself.

“It turns out that we needed to shift the location of Chandrayaan-1 by about 180 degrees, or half a cycle from the old orbital estimates from 2009,” said Ryan Park, manager of JPL’s Solar System Dynamics group.

“But otherwise, Chandrayaan-1’s orbit still had the shape and alignment that we expected.”

Chandrayaan-1 was India’s first mission to the Moon, and its job was to perform chemical and geological mapping.

Most famously, it had an impactor attached to it that was released in November 2008 and deliberately crashed into the Moon, blasting up huge amounts of lunar dust for scientists to examine – providing the first solid evidence of water ice on the lunar surface.

After 10 months, Chandrayaan-1 completed its mission, and lost contact with Earth as planned.

No one knows what shape it’s in now or what it’s been doing out there in the cold depths of space all this time, but it’s slightly comforting to know it’s still there.

India is now planning its second moon mission, Chandrayaan-2, which will consist of an orbiter, lander, and rover, for early 2018.

In the case of Chandrayaan-1, there’s not a whole lot we can do with this information. But the accurate discovery of the spacecraft, as well as NASA’s LRO, is a proof-of-concept for this new technique, which will be hugely useful in years to come as we continue to send humans and technology out into space.

Not only does it mean we can keep better track of any spacecraft or people we have in space, but it also means we can better monitor for any hazards heading their way.

Plus, it’s always nice to know in the cold expanse of space that someone back home can figure out where you are.

India Just Set a New World Record by Launching 104 Satellites in 18 Minutes

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The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) managed to launch 104 satellites into space in the span of 18 minutes.

That number nearly triples the previous record of 37 satellites in a single day, which was set by Russia’s space agency in 2014.

While traveling at 27,358 km/h (17,000 mph), the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rocket released each satellite at a risky interval of just a few seconds.

At that velocity, an incorrect launch path could result in a collision of the satellites, 88 of which were small, 10-pound ‘Doves’ belonging to Planet Labs. However, all went well in the skies above the Indian Ocean.

This left commercial investors in the space program ecstatic as many companies around the world have come to the ISRO in hopes of a much more cost-effective satellite launch.

Indeed, the organisation is proving much more frugal in comparison to those in the Americas or Europe.

For example, the ISRO launch of a spacecraft to Mars in 2014 cost around US$74 million, while NASA budgeted around US$671 million for its own Mars mission that same year, a difference of almost US$600 million.

ISRO chairman A.S. Kiran Kumar noted that half the costs of the 104 satellite mission were covered by commercial fees, like those paid by Planet Labs.

With satellites becoming easier and cheaper to launch, though, some involved in the space program are worried about a potential increase in space debris.

Most satellite are only in operation for two to three years, so they urge companies and government organisations to take that into consideration when deciding how many satellites to send into space.

Watch the video. URL:https://youtu.be/OyJ2x8HyuqM

NASA peers into one of Earth’s strongest storms ever.

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New satellite images just obtained from NASA’s Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA’s Aqua spacecraft and the Indian Space Research Organization‘s OceanSAT-2 ocean wind scatterometer provide a glimpse into one of the most powerful storms ever recorded on Earth.

NASA peers into one of earth's strongest storms ever

According to the U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center, Typhoon Haiyan had maximum sustained winds of 195 mph (314 kilometers per hour), with gusts up to 235 mph (379 kilometers per hour) shortly before making landfall in the central Philippines today. That would make it one of the strongest storms ever recorded. Weather officials in the Philippines reported the storm, known locally as Typhoon Yolanda, came ashore with  of 147 mph (235 kilometers per hour) and gusts of up to 170 mph (275 miles per hour).

The two AIRS images, acquired at 8:59 p.m. PST on Nov. 7 (left) and 9:17 a.m. PST on Nov. 8 (right), show the powerful storm in infrared. When the image on the left was acquired, the storm was located 214 miles (344 kilometers) south-southeast of Manila. By the time the image on the right was acquired, the fast-moving storm was already centered west of the Philippines, on a forecast track that will take it to Vietnam. The storm’s coldest cloud-top temperatures are indicated by the brightest shades of purple, and show where Haiyan’s heaviest rainfall was occurring.

NASA peers into one of earth's strongest storms ever
Visible image of Super Typhoon Haiyan acquired from NASA’s Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA’s Aqua spacecraft at 8:59 p.m. PST, Nov. 7. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Another image, from the OSCAT radar scatterometer on the Indian Space Research Organization’s OceanSAT-2 satellite, shows Haiyan’s ocean surface winds at 5:30 p.m. PST on Nov. 6. The  data were calculated by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., using an advanced wind retrieval algorithm designed for tropical cyclone conditions. The colors indicate wind speed and arrows indicate wind direction. The wind speeds were measured in 15-by-15-mile (24-by-24-kilometer) boxes that recorded a maximum value of 128 miles, or 206 kilometers, per hour). That’s why these wind speeds are lower than the maximum small-scale winds calculated by the U.S. Navy Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

NASA peers into one of earth's strongest storms ever
Super Typhoon Haiyan’s ocean surface winds were measured by the OSCAT radar scatterometer on the Indian Space Research Organization’s OceanSAT-2 satellite at 5:30 p.m. PST on Nov. 6. The colors indicate wind speed and arrows indicate wind direction.

NASA-Funded Scientists Detect Water on Moon’s Surface that Hints at Water Below.

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NASA-funded lunar research has yielded evidence of water locked in mineral grains on the surface of the moon from an unknown source deep beneath the surface.

Using data from NASA’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument aboard the Indian Space Research Organization‘s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, scientists remotely detected magmatic water, or water that originates from deep within the moon’s interior, on the surface of the moon.

The findings, published Aug. 25 in Nature Geoscience, represent the first detection of this form of water from lunar orbit. Earlier studies had shown the existence of magmatic water in lunar samples returned during the Apollo program.

M3 imaged the lunar impact crater Bullialdus, which lies near the lunar equator. Scientists were interested in studying this area because they could better quantify the amount of water inside the rocks due to the crater’s location and the type of rocks it held. The central peak of the crater is made up of a type of rock that forms deep within the lunar crust and mantle when magma is trapped underground.

“This rock, which normally resides deep beneath the surface, was excavated from the lunar depths by the impact that formed Bullialdus crater,” said Rachel Klima, a planetary geologist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md.

“Compared to its surroundings, we found that the central portion of this crater contains a significant amount of hydroxyl – a molecule consisting of one oxygen atom and one hydrogen atom — which is evidence that the rocks in this crater contain water that originated beneath the lunar surface,” Klima said.

In 2009, M3 provided the first mineralogical map of the lunar surface and discovered water molecules in the polar regions of the moon. This water is thought to be a thin layer formed from solar wind hitting the moon’s surface. Bullialdus crater is in a region with an unfavorable environment for solar wind to produce significant amounts of water on the surface.

“NASA missions like Lunar Prospector and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite and instruments like M3 have gathered crucial data that fundamentally changed our understanding of whether water exists on the surface of the moon,” said S. Pete Worden, center director at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. “Similarly, we hope that upcoming NASA missions such as the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, or LADEE, will change our understanding of the lunar sky.”

The detection of internal water from orbit means scientists can begin to test some of the findings from sample studies in a broader context, including in regions that are far from where the Apollo sites are clustered on the near side of the moon. For many years, researchers believed that the rocks from the moon were bone-dry and any water detected in the Apollo samples had to be contamination from Earth.

“Now that we have detected water that is likely from the interior of the moon, we can start to compare this water with other characteristics of the lunar surface,” said Klima. “This internal magmatic water also provides clues about the moon’s volcanic processes and internal composition, which helps us address questions about how the moon formed, and how magmatic processes changed as it cooled.”

APL is a not-for-profit division of Johns Hopkins University. Joshua Cahill and David Lawrence of APL and Justin Hagerty of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Astrogeology Science Center in Flagstaff, Ariz., co-authored the paper. NASA’s Lunar Advanced Science and Engineering Program, the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI) at Ames and the NASA Planetary Mission Data Analysis Program supported the research. NLSI is a virtual organization jointly funded by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate in Washington, to enable collaborative, interdisciplinary research in support of NASA lunar science programs.

Source: NASA