India's Chandrayaan Blasts Off To The Moon!

Originally posted by mikesingh
reply to post by sentinel2107

 

Wow!!!

Fantastic resolution!! Way to go!

Thanx sentinel for keeping us updated!!

Some relevant information related to the "loop-the-loop" tactics:

Chandrayaan-1 could have been fired to reach the moon, which is about 3,84,000 km from earth, in one shot. But that was not done. Instead the spacecraft is being moved towards the moon in increasingly elliptical orbits with an apogee (farthest point from the earth) increasing many times more than the perigee.

“We could have done it one shot, but there is a possibility of missing the moon,” said M. Annadurai, Project Director of Chandrayaan-1 to this Correspondent. “So we have adopted an incremental increase in the orbits’ perigee.”

That probably explains why the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has decided to settle for five increasingly elliptical orbits before Chandrayaan-1 reaches the moon’s sphere of influence.

[Seems they are aware of possible lunar gravity discrepancy, eh..]

Full story here...



[edit on 31/10/2008 by sentinel2107]

reply to post by sentinel2107


Haha nah I reckon ISRO scientists are just bricking it that they might have missed the moon/ crashed.

Everyone is watching this mission to see how ISRO does. Not to mention the 5 foreign satellites that India would hate to crash... very embarrasing. Not only ISRO, but Antrix and India's reputation is also riding on the mission.

Best to take the first steps into space slowly and carefully eh.

reply to post by sentinel2107


Thats a neat explanation. I was waiting for this so long. Well now I am sure to see some neat pics of moon in days to come and wish it goes there safe first place.


Cheers!

Looks like Chandrayaan-1 has started beaming pictures of the Earth. Here's a link to the article.

www.hindu.com...

The pictures are not available yet.

I dont understand why yet AGAIN we get a BLACK and WHITE image ? I mean color is not something really new is it ? If they can transfer an image of such high resolution, they might as well be able to transfer a color image as well from the probe.

The Chinese sent back a B&W image as well. JAXA had the right idea of sending along a HD camera with their probe.

However from their website, JAXA's Hayabusa Asteroid Explorer is definitely the "REAL DEAL" in autonomous space exploration. They collected samples of an Asteroid's soil 2.5 AU's away and getting it back to earth.

Check it out here

[edit on 31-10-2008 by IAF101]

Originally posted by 44soulslayer
That resolution really is incredible!

The specs on the CCD are quite impressive. This should definitely be the best remote sensing mission to the moon ever!

Unless they go the NASA way of smudging out anomalies (read artifacts/Moon bases!! ). I got a dirty feeling they're all in it together! And therefore the net result could be zilch! Now that would be a tragedy of horrendous proportions! dn:

Originally posted by sentinel2107
Some relevant information related to the "loop-the-loop" tactics:
Seems they are aware of possible lunar gravity discrepancy, eh..

Not only that, they are 'fine tuning' the spacecraft so as to get latched on to Moon's gravity without a hitch by factoring in the effects of the gravitational pull of the Sun, Earth, and the Moon combined. With the trajectories they are following, they will have ample time to study these effects before putting it into the final orbit 100km from the Moon's surface.

The initial elliptical orbits around the Moon would be used to study the effects of MASCONS (Gravitational anomalies) on the Moon that would also need to be factored in to keep it in a circular 100km orbit. It would be firing its thrusters at regular intervals to keep it there and that is why its life span is just 2 years as by then its fuel would have run out.

Cheers!

Oh man! I couldn't help but reproduce the first image taken by Chandrayaan's TMC. Check out the res! It's absolutely amazing at 70,000 km!!

So you can imagine what we'll be seeing 100 km from the Moon's surface! With a resolution of less than 5 meters, you could pick out an object the size of two two double beds!!


Courtesy: ISRO

Cheers!

[edit on 1-11-2008 by mikesingh]

Originally posted by mikesingh
So you can imagine what we'll be seeing 100 km from the Moon's surface! With a resolution of less than 5 meters, you could pick out an object the size of two two double beds!!

ummmm errr nice picture... but ummm can you point out the two double beds on Erath? I am sure there must be one in that image?





But pray tell WHY still black and white?

WHY could they not rent a cam like this one?



FULL SIZE HERE

Warning Large file takes four scans to load...

WHY oh WHY can we just not send one of those ?

Ikonos Geoeye Image

[edit on 1-11-2008 by zorgon]

Originally posted by zorgon

Originally posted by mikesingh
So you can imagine what we'll be seeing 100 km from the Moon's surface! With a resolution of less than 5 meters, you could pick out an object the size of two two double beds!!

ummmm errr nice picture... but ummm can you point out the two double beds on Erath? I am sure there must be one in that image?

Not from 70,000 km for Chrissake!!! I meant from 100 km! So there!

But pray tell WHY still black and white?

Yes, it’s surprising that they haven’t displayed a color image. The specs mention that the TMC will image in the panchromatic spectral region of 0.5 to 0.85 µm. That means it covers all spectral bands.

Spectral bands

Blue - 0.44–0.52 μm.
Green - 0.5–0.59 μm.
Red - 0.63–0.7 μm.
Near infrared - 0.76–0.85 μm.

Maybe this was a test image. They’ll probably turn on the juice a little later! Let’s wait and see.

Cheers!

Originally posted by IAF101

Also just reading up of the Trans Lunar Injection and Hohmann transfers, its strikes me that ISRO didnt choose to a faster Hohmann transfer ? Is the Lunar probe really small that it doesnt have enough fuel for such a long burn or were they trying to play it safe ??

Actually, the Hohmann transfer uses the least fuel, but is the most time consuming. The last orbit of chandrayaan around the Earth is actually the Hohmann transfer orbit. The other smaller orbits are for calibration purposes.

Originally posted by mikesinghThat means it covers all spectral bands.

Spectral bands

Blue - 0.44–0.52 μm.
Green - 0.5–0.59 μm.
Red - 0.63–0.7 μm.
Near infrared - 0.76–0.85 μm.

Oh dear You know what THAT means... ArMaP will be here to remind us they are not true color images

Originally posted by zorgon
Oh dear

You know what THAT means... ArMaP will be here to remind us they are not true color images

What is a true color image? Is what we're perceiving with our biological eyes, 'true' color? What do we know what true color is? After all, our retinas pick up the visible wavelengths and send it to our brains where it is processed. Some animals can 'see' mostly in infra red. So what is 'true' color?

There are millions of color shades toward the extremities of the visible spectrum that cannot be discerned by the human brain. If there was a method to do it, would we say that those colors are 'false' and that only the discernible colors are 'true'?

Food for thought, eh?

Cheers!

Originally posted by mikesingh
Food for thought, eh?

well see many many moons ago I was taught that the three primary colors of light were red blue and green... you old color tv had groups of three pixels RGB...

From those ALL colors are made and that is what we see... However some skeptics seem to thing that combining these three colors is not giving us a true image. Yes it is true that adding infrared 'enhances what we see..

But since we cannot see infrared... just how does it enhance' what we see... and why is what we see not true color?

Ah well... at least we know what is real yes?

[[[ sitting back and waiting for the explanations]]]]


Its gonna be a long two weeks....

reply to post by mikesingh


If you think about it, how do you know what my retina/brain interprets as red is the same as what yours does. If I could somehow see what you see I might say "Hey! That not red, that's green."

When we're little we're taught that it's red, so red it is.

Originally posted by Phage
If you think about it, how do you know what my retina/brain interprets as red is the same as what yours does. If I could somehow see what you see I might say "Hey! That not red, that's green."

Hmmm good point... I know a few people that are color 'blind'

But then could I use the same argument against the "I see only rocks' crowd? Perhaps their brain interprets a structure on the moon as a rock?

Just a thought

Originally posted by zorgon
But then could I use the same argument against the "I see only rocks' crowd? Perhaps their brain interprets a structure on the moon as a rock?
Just a thought

Bingo! Looks like you hit the nail on the head! One requires a superior brain setup with advanced software inside to discern the wheat from the chaff!! Translated, it means a horrendously high IQ!



[edit on 2-11-2008 by mikesingh]

reply to post by zorgon


Just to show that I am paying attention, if they include the infra-red channel then it would not be near true colour, unless the infra-red image is the same as one of the other channels.

And yes, there is no way of knowing if we see the same things other people see, and even in a personal level there may be differences, I see slightly redder with my right eye (or bluer with the left, I can not say which is truer), and the environment also interferes with our way of seeing colours, with less light we see green better than other colours, for example.

As for the rocks and the structures, although it is a different thing, it may happen, there are some know cases of people that interpret things in a different way, but usually they are not capable of identifying common objects or they misidentify them, like the man who mistook his wife for a hat (a true story, as strange as it sounds, the last case on this PDF, for those that may find interesting).

Check this out:
Chinese media questions Chandrayaan's success

They cite n2yo.com, which tracks satellites in "real-time," and till a few days back, it WAS displaying data related to the 2nd orbit of Chandrayaan, even when it had been raised to the higher orbits. However, I checked again yesterday and seems they have updated the orbit to reflect the latest.

The orbital speed, however, seem totally out of kilter. Yesterday, for an altitude of about 200,000 km, it was showing about 14.9 km/s, and today, at 150,000 km, it shows around 10.9 km/s. Not only are the speeds "whacko" in my opinion, but Chandrayaan is slowing down as it moves from the apogee to the perigee.

Any thoughts on n2yo and its new age space science?

[edit on 3/11/2008 by sentinel2107]

The US and Russians sent their missions to the moon couple of years before I was born. That is 1969. It was also the year the US landed people on the moon.

What India, China or Japan has achieved is nothing spectacular. They have merely reinvented the wheel because US did not share the technology all these years with the rest of the world.

There is only one significant aspect of the Moon mission for India and that is it has acquired ICBM capability for its nuclear weapons. When India can send a payload as far as the moon, it most certainly can send a nuke across the world.

The other interesting thing is now everyone is interested in sending people to the moon and mars. Wonder why this huge waste of funds?

If the US and the Russians have already been there and done that, why don't they share their knowledge (they done it to a great extent) and engage in joint explorations rather than expensive nationalistic flings.

Everyone knows it is cheaper to make things in China and program them to work properly in India. So why not the Americans simply design, the the Chinese and Japanese Manufacture, the Indian program it, the Europeans test it and the Russians launch them?

The reason is simple. Everybody including contractors, companies and individuals know there is a lot of money to be made from these projects.

That is the main goal not that piece of moon rock.