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

Web updates on objects approaching Earth: NASA

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is introducing a new Web site that will provide a centralized resource for information on near-Earth objects - those asteroids and comets that can approach Earth.

The "Asteroid Watch" site also contains links for the interested public to sign up for NASA's new asteroid widget and Twitter account.

"Most people have a fascination with near-Earth objects," said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL.

"And I have to agree with them. I have studied them for over three decades and I find them to be scientifically fascinating, and a few are potentially hazardous to Earth. The goal of our Web site is to provide the public with the most up-to-date and accurate information on these intriguing objects," he added.

The website provides information on NASA's missions to study comets, asteroids and near-Earth objects, and also provides the basic facts and the very latest in science and research on these objects.

News about near-Earth object discoveries and Earth flybys will be available and made accessible on the site via a downloadable widget and RSS feed.

For those who want to learn about their space rocks on the go, a Twitter feed is offered.

"Asteroid Watch" also contains a link to JPL's more technical Near-Earth Objects Web site, where many scientists and researchers studying near-Earth objects go for information.

"This innovative new Web application gives the public an unprecedented look at what's going on in near-Earth space," said Lindley Johnson, program executive for the Near-Earth Objects Observation program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

NASA supports surveys that detect and track asteroids and comets passing close to Earth.

The Near-Earth Object Observation Program, commonly called "Spaceguard," also plots the orbits of these objects to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.

Agencies

Deep space Internet tested sucessfully: NASA

The US space agency NASA said that it successfuly conducted a first test of a deep space communications network modeled on the Internet.

"This is the first step in creating a totally new space communications capability, an interplanetary Internet," Adrian Hooke, NASA's manager of space-networking architecture, technology and standards, said in a statement.

The US space agency said Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineers used software called Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN, to transmit dozens of space images to and from a NASA spacecraft some 20 million miles (32.4 million kilometers) from Earth.

NASA said the software protocol, which must be able to withstand delays, disruptions and disconnections in space, was designed in partnership with Vint Cerf, a vice president at Internet search giant Google.

DTN sends information using a method that differs from the normal Internet's Transmission-Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP, communication suite, which Cerf co-designed, NASA said.

Unlike TCP/IP, DTN does not assume a continuous end-to-end connection, NASA said, noting that glitches can happen when a spacecraft moves behind a planet, or when solar storms and long communication delays occur.

It said the delay, for example, in sending or receiving data from Mars takes between three-and-a-half minutes and 20 minutes at the speed of light.

NASA said that if a destination path cannot be found, data packets are not discarded but kept by each network node until it can communicate safely with another node.

Eventually, it said, the information is delivered to the end user.

"In space today, an operations team must manually schedule each link and generate all the commands to specify which data to send, when to send it, and where to send it," said Leigh Torgerson, manager of the DTN Experiment Operations Center at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"With standardized DTN, this can all be done automatically."

NASA said engineers had begun a month-long series of DTN demonstrations in October using NASA's Epoxi spacecraft, which is on a mission to encounter Comet Hartley 2 in two years, as a Mars data-relay orbiter.

It said there are 10 nodes in the early interplanetary network -- the Epoxi spacecraft itself and nine on the ground at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory simulating Mars landers, orbiters and ground mission-operations centers.

NASA said a test of DTN software loaded on board the International Space Station would begin next summer.

It said an "Interplanetary Internet" could enable many new types of space missions including complex flights involving multiple spacecraft and ensure reliable communications for astronauts on the the moon.

Laurels for India on successful moon landing

France, chair of the 27-nation European Union has lauded India on the successful lunar exploration mission, which, it stressed, confirmed "India's eminent position among the world-class scientific and technological powers".

"France, on behalf of the European Union, warmly congratulates India for the successful landing of the Moon Impact Probe and the launch of the lunar exploration programme," the French embassy said in a statement here.

"This remarkable success of the Indian space vehicle confirms anew India's eminent position among the world-class scientific and technological powers," it said.

"France and the European Union look forward to the strengthening of the existing scientific cooperations with India in the field of space, which are particularly promiseful for the development of science and knowledge worldwide," the statement underlined.

In a milestone for the country's space programme, India planted its national colours on the moon Thursday as the foil-wrapped Moon Impact Probe landed in the Shakelton crater near the lunar South Pole.
The Moon Impact Probe, dropped from the larger, unmanned Chandrayaan-1 orbiter, sampled the thin lunar atmosphere during a half-hour free fall.
Chandrayaan-1, India's first unmanned lunar probe, was launched Oct 22. After the US, then USSR, and Japan, India is the fourth country to land a probe on moon.

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.