ISRO PSLV C-16 Rocket Launch Successful

ISRO or Indian Space Research Organisation PSLV C-16 was successfully launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota at 10.12 am on Wednesday morning. The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) is carrying a remote sensing satellite Resourcesat-2 and two mini spacecraft.

The countdown, which began at 0342 hours today, was progressing smoothly, ISRO sources said.

Apart from Resourcesat-2, the PSLV-C16 will also launch two other satellites, Youthsat and X-Sat. The 1206 kg Resourcesat-2, the primary satellite, has been built by ISRO for facilitating the study and management of natural resources.

The 92 kg Youthsat is a joint Indo-Russian satellite for stellar and atmospheric studies. X-Sat, weighing 106 kg, is a microsatellite for imaging applications built by Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore.

However, it still waits to be seen if ISRO's scientists can taste success even on the GSLV that it still needs to perfect.

Await more news...

Work cutoff for ISRO scientists

India Space Research Organization (ISRO) has established itself as a reliable worldwide service provider for the launch of light satellites up to 2 tons. However, they have not been able to replicate this success with heavier satellites. The team of scientists from ISRO will have their hands full perfecting the launch vehicles for the heavier satellites. The timetable calls for the launch of atleast three or four satellites this calendar year. The future of India's moon mission could depend on this success.

ISRO had earlier this year announced that it plans to launch a number of satellites within this calendar year. These include the launch of Resourcesat-2, Meghtropiques, Youthsat and X-sat satellites all scheduled for this year’s launch.

While the Resourcesat-2, is an advanced remote sensing satellite, Youthsat, is a participatory scientific mission with payloads from both Russia and India, and X-sat, Singapore's first indigenous satellite put off since last year are expected to be launched on board of PSLV C-16 during the next few months,

Despite the failures of two GSLV satellite launches last year, “The morale of our scientists remains high,” K. Radhakrishnan, chairman of ISRO told reporters a press conference after the crash. But the team at ISRO has been tight lipped and not willing to reveal anything more to the media.

Experts say the year 2010 was bad for ISRO. It had the recent failure for a heavy satellite launch -- GSLV-F06, rocket carrying a 2,130 kg communication satellite, which exploded 63 seconds after taking off from Sriharikota in December 2010. Earlier on April 15, 2010 GSLV-D3 developmental flight carrying GSAT4 onboard failed on take-off and plunged into the sea.

Experts say if these satellites had been successfully launched it would have guaranteed India as a super space power. Success or failures are part and parcel of space program and ISRO is no exception. NASA, Russians and the European Space Agency have also had many failures mixed with success.

In fact, according to a Wikipedia report, since 1991 when India launched the GSLV program it has been a mixed bag of successes and failures. It kicked off with GSLV Mk.I, GSAT-1, a satellite with a payload of 1,540 kg was termed as partial success. A number of subsequent launches followed with success and failures. So out of the seven GSLV launches so far four were categorized as success or partial success while three of them failed.

Interestingly, Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) is built on top of the earlier successful Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). There was the addition of liquid strap-on boosters and a cryogenic upper stage to put a 5000 kg into an easterly low Earth orbit. Indian GSLV engine makes use of liquid hydrogen and oxygen that did not ignite properly leading to earlier failures.

The government has also constituted a review committee to look into the failures, the committee will now only look into the failure of the GSLV program and also future launches like the INSAT-3D and Chandrayaan-II. This is more grueling work for the ISRO team since the operation would require an indigenous cryogenic stage.

The country’s ambitious moon project, Chandrayaan II project is expected to be launched in 2013 or 2014 and the scientists are need to act fast to meet the aggressive time-line.

Desi version of Google Earth launched by ISRO

Bhuvan gives you an easy way to experience, explore and visualize IRS images over Indian region.

ISRO is well known amongst space faring nations for its world-leading reputation in developing new, indigenous and innovative service oriented applications using remote sensing technology.

Over the past 2 decades, ISRO has mastered the art of developing these unique applications using various spectral, spatial and temporal resolutions offered by the versatile IRS satellites and these have been successfully institutionalized in many important areas of policy making, natural resources management, disaster support, and enhancing the quality of life across all sections of the society.

Bhuvan, an ambitious project of ISRO

Bhuvan is an initiative to showcase this distinctiveness of Indian imaging capabilities including the thematic information derived from such imagery which could be of vital importance to common man with a focus on Indian region. Bhuvan, an ambitious project of ISRO to take Indian images and thematic information in multiple spatial resolutions to people through a web portal through easy access to information on basic natural resources in the geospatial domain.

Bhuvan showcases Indian images by the superimposition of these IRS satellite imageries on 3D globe. It displays satellite images of varying resolution of India’s surface, allowing users to visually see things like cities and important places of interest looking perpendicularly down or at an oblique angle, with different perspectives and can navigate through 3D viewing environment.

The degree of resolution showcased is based on the points of interest and popularity, but most of the Indian terrain is covered upto at least 5.8 meters of resolution with the least spatial resolution being 55 meters from AWifs Sensor. With such rich content, Bhuvan opens the door to graphic visualisation of digital geospatial India allowing individuals to experience the fully interactive terrain viewing capabilities.

Bhuvan brings a whole lot of uniqueness

Multi-resolution images from multi-sensor IRS satellites of India is seamlessly depicted through the Bhuvan web portal by enabling a common man to zoom into specific area of interest at high resolution. Bhuvan brings a whole lot of uniqueness in understanding our own natural resources whilst presenting beautiful images and thematic vectors generated from varieties of geospatial information.

Bhuvan will also attempt to bring out the importance of multi-temporal data and to highlight the changes taking place to our natural resources, which will serve as a general awareness on our changing planet.

There are lot more special value added services which will be enabled onto the web portal in due course of time and each one of those services are going to be unique to preserving and conserving our precious natural resources through public participation. We are sure the common man will get rich benefits from these Indian geospatial data services in days to come.

Basic features of Bhuvan

Access, explore and visualise 2D and 3D image data along with rich thematic information on Soil, wasteland, water resources etc.

Visualise multi-resolution, multi-sensor, multi-temporal image data

Superpose administrative boundaries of choice on images as required

Visualisation of AWS ( Automatic Weather Stations) data/information in a graphic view and use tabular weather data of user choice

Fly to locations ( Flies from the current location directly to the selected location)

Heads-Up Display ( HUD) naviation controls ( Tilt slider, north indicator, opacity, compass ring, zoom slider)

Navigation using the 3D view Pop-up menu (Fly-in, Fly out, jump in, jump around, view point)

3D Fly through (3D view to fly to locations, objects in the terrain, and navigate freely using the mouse or keyboard)

Drawing 2D objects (Text labels, polylines, polygons, rectangles, 2D arrows, circles, ellipse)

Drawing 3D Objects (placing of expressive 3D models, 3D polygons, boxes)

Snapshot creation (copies the 3D view to a floating window and allows to save to a external file)

Measurement tools (Horizontal distance, aerial distance, vertical distance, measure area)

Shadow Analysis (it sets the sun position based on the given time creating shadows and effects the lighting on the terrain)

There would be many more value added functions and facilities which will be added into the package from time to time.

Particular interest of ISRO/DOS would be to provide such functionalities to common man so that he/she adopts participatory approach with scientists to solve simple problems easily and interactively.

Urban Design Tools (to build roads, junctions and traffic lights in an urban setting)

Contour map ( Displays a colorized terrain map and contour lines)

Terrain profile ( Displays the terrain elevation profile along a path)

Draw tools (Creates simples markers, free hand lines, urban designs)

Navigation map (to jump to and view locations in the 3D India)

Courtesy: http://www.bhuvan.nrsc.gov.in/index.html

Agencies

ISRO, Russian Space Agency join hands for Indian Man Mission

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the Russian Space Agency have joined hands to share critical equipments for the Indian Man Mission to the Moon.

India and Russia signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to promote joint activities in the field of human space flight programme during the visit of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last week.

"Under the MoU, both countries will jointly build spacecraft for the Indian manned mission," said S Satish, spokesperson of ISRO.

As per the MoU, an Indian astronaut will embark on a mission to space in a Russian spacecraft within the next five years, ahead of ISRO's maiden human space flight scheduled for 2014 or 2015.

"We have well laid our plans and of course manned mission are in our plan and programme. May be manned mission for the government approval, comes immediately, around 2014 or 2015, will be the targeted launch date," added Satish.

Recently, ISRO achieved benchmark success when the Chandrayaan-1 (India's moon mission) was successfully launched on October 22, by PSLV-C11.

This success allowed India to join the elite lunar club which Russia, the USA, Japan, China and European Space Agency are already members.

India is also planning to launch the satellite 'Aditya' to study the sun by 2012 and it also hopes to send an astronaut into space by 2012.

Source; Agencies

China to land moon-buggy by 2012

China aims to put an unmanned buggy on the moon by 2012, local media reported, laying the ground for its greater ambitions of putting a man on the moon.

China became the third country to put a man in space with its own rocket, after the former Soviet Union and the United States. It sent two more astronauts on a five-day flight on its Shenzhou VI craft in October 2005.

China launched its third manned space mission in September, with live-to-air footage of its first space-walk captivating the nation.

Its first lunar probe, the Chang'e-1 satellite, named after a lonely goddess who lives with a rabbit on the moon and pines for her husband, finished its mission last month after orbiting the moon thousands of times.

"China will send a moon-lander and moon-buggy around 2012," the Beijing News said, citing state television.

Before the moon-lander, China will send Chang'e-2 satellite to fulfil another circumlunar mission, CCTV added.

China said its lunar mission would include three steps of "orbiting, landing and returning", but has not disclosed schedule of any manned moon mission so far.

Chandrayaan-II launch in 2012

Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) chairman G Madhavan Nair said on Thursday that India would launch its second lunar mission, Chandrayaan-II, in 2012 and a small robot would be dropped on the moon.

"Chandrayaan-II will be launched by 2012. We will have a lander that will drop a small robot on the moon, which will pick samples, analyze data and send the data back," Nair told media on the sidelines of a Space Technology seminar here.

Already the project has been formulated for Chandrayaan-II. Talking about Chandrayaan-I, Madhavan Nair said the Moon Impact Probe would land on the lunar surface on Friday evening.
He said already 95 per cent of the mission had been completed and the total success of the mission would be known only after the remaining work was completed.

Regarding the 'solar mission' called Aditya, Nair said a satellite was intended to study solar emissions and it would be launched within two years. ISRO would also go ahead with the study of sending a spacecraft to Mars.

Chandrayaan-1 reaches final orbit

Destination Moon
It is yet another historic day in India’s space odyssey. Chandrayaan-1 successfully reached its intended operational orbit at a height of about 100 km from the lunar surface. This followed a series of three orbit reduction manoeuvres during the past three days by repeatedly firing the spacecraft’s 440 Newton Liquid Engine.

As part of these manoeuvres, the engine was fired totally for about 16 minutes. As a result, the farthest point of Chandrayaan-1’s orbit (aposelene) from the moon’s surface was first reduced from 7,502 km to 255 km and finally to 100 km. The nearest point (periselene) was reduced from 200 km to 182 km and finally to 100 km.

With this, the carefully planned complex sequence of operations to carryChandrayaan-1 from Earth orbit to operational lunar orbit has been completed. During these operations, Chandrayaan-1’s liquid engine, built by Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC), Thiruvananthapuram, was fired ten times. In its current orbit, Chandrayaan-1 takes about 2 hours to go round the moon once.

From this orbit passing over the moon’s polar regions, it will conduct chemical, mineralogical and photogeological mapping with 11 instruments (payloads). Two of them — Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) and Radiation Dose Monitor (RADOM) — have already been successfully switched on. TMC has taken pictures of the Earth and the moon.

The next major event of the mission is the release of the Moon Impact Probe (MIP) and its landing on the moon’s surface.

After Moon, ISRO plans mission to Sun

After the Chandrayaan-I moon odyssey, it's 'Mission Sun' for the Indian Space Research Organisation.

Scientists at ISRO are in the advanced stage of designing a spacecraft, named 'Aditya', to study the outermost region of the Sun called corona.

"That's a mini satellite. In fact, the design is just getting completed," ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair told PTI.

Chandrayaan
"During solar maxim...which is happening...we would like to see the type of emissions which are taking place in the Sun and how it interacts with the ionosphere and atmosphere and so on," he said.

According to Dr Jayati Datta, deputy programme director, Space Science Office, ISRO, Aditya is the first space basedSolar Coronagraph intended to study corona.

'Aditya' would be the first attempt by the Indian scientific community to unravel the mysteries associated with coronal heating, coronal mass ejections and the associated space weather processes and study of these would provide important information on the solar activity conditions, she said.

We will have total map of the moon, says ISRO

"A basic understanding of the physical processes and continuous monitoring would help in taking necessary steps towards protecting ISRO's satellites either by switching them off or putting them on a stand-by mode as warranted by the background conditions," Datta aaid.

The temperature of the solar corona goes beyond a million degrees. From the Earth, corona can be seen only during total solar eclipses, mainly due to the bright solar disc and the scattering of the sunlight by the Earth's atmosphere. One has to go beyond the atmosphere to be able to mask the bright solar disc and study the corona.

Chandrayaan may reveal moon mysteries

The space borne coronagraph 'Aditya' in would study the Coronal Mass Ejection and consequently the crucial physical parameters for space weather such as the coronal magnetic field structures, evolution of the coronal magnetic field etc, Datta said.

"Completely new information on the velocity fields and their variability in the inner corona, having an important bearing on the unsolved problem of heating of the Corona, would be obtained," she explained.

Activities towards 'Aditya Mission' have been initiated with the involvement of scientists from ISRO centres and prime national research institutes in the country.

PM sees first pictures from Chandrayaan

ISRO is planning to launch 'Aditya Mission' during the next high solar activity period. However, the exact date/time is not yet confirmed. "Aditya' is an indigenous/Indian mission. So far, there is no plan of putting any foreign payload on board Aditya mission," Datta said, adding that the United States, the European Space Agency and Japan [Images] have flown missions to study Sun and solar corona/activities.

The sun, which is highly turbulent and dynamic, sends out large chunks of charged particles and emits highly energetic electromagnetic radiation in all directions.

These radiations, on reaching Earth, cause severe near-Earth-space disturbances called Geomagnetic storms, which affect communication links, disturb power lines in high altitudes, cause aurora in polar regions and affect satellite systems directly and also indirectly through changes brought about in the near Earth atmosphere.

Chandrayaan-1 inches closer to moon

The fourth orbit-raising manoeuvre of Chandrayaan-1 was carried out which took the lunar spacecraft closer to the moon, the Indian Space Research Organisation said.

During this operation at 0738 hours, the spacecraft's 440 Newton liquid engine was fired for about three minutes, the Bangalore-headquartered space agency said in a statement.

"With this, Chandrayaan-1 entered into a more elliptical orbit whose apogee (farthest point to earth) lies at 2,67,000 km while the perigee (nearest point to earth) lies at 465 km. Thus, Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft's present orbit extends more than half the way to the moon," ISRO said.

In this orbit, the spacecraft takes about six days to go round the earth once.

The health of the spacecraft is being continuously monitored from the Spacecraft Control Centre at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) here with support from Indian Deep Space Network antennas at Byalalu near Bangalore.

ISRO said all systems on board the spacecraft are performing normally.

One more orbit raising manoeuvre is scheduled to send the spacecraft to the vicinity of he moon at a distance of about 3,84,000 km from the earth, it said.