Chandrayaan-3: Historic India Moon Mission Sends New Photos of Lunar Surface (bbc.com) 42
Long-time Slashdot reader William Robinson shares a report from the BBC: India's space agency has released the first images of the Moon taken by the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, which entered lunar orbit on Saturday. The images show craters on lunar surface getting larger and larger as the spacecraft draws closer. Chandrayaan-3's lander and rover are due to reach the surface on August 23. If successful, India will be the first country to perform a controlled "soft landing" near the south pole. It will also become only the fourth to achieve a soft landing on the Moon after the US, the former Soviet Union and China.
After the spacecraft orbited the Earth for about 10 days, it was sent into the translunar orbit last Tuesday and successfully injected into the lunar orbit on Saturday. Indian Space Research Agency (Isro) said that all checks showed that Chandrayaan-3 was in good "health." It has also pointed out that "this is the third time in succession that Isro has successfully injected a spacecraft into the lunar orbit." Scientists say Chandrayaan-3, the third in India's program of lunar exploration, is expected to build on the success of its earlier Moon missions.
After the spacecraft orbited the Earth for about 10 days, it was sent into the translunar orbit last Tuesday and successfully injected into the lunar orbit on Saturday. Indian Space Research Agency (Isro) said that all checks showed that Chandrayaan-3 was in good "health." It has also pointed out that "this is the third time in succession that Isro has successfully injected a spacecraft into the lunar orbit." Scientists say Chandrayaan-3, the third in India's program of lunar exploration, is expected to build on the success of its earlier Moon missions.
Astonishing (Score:1)
The images show craters on lunar surface getting larger and larger as the spacecraft draws closer.
Maybe I read things too literally, but somehow I don't think the craters were actually getting larger and larger
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No that was the public train covered in Indians.
Re: Astonishing (Score:3, Funny)
Re: Astonishing (Score:2, Troll)
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It's more like that means you only read half the sentence.
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India is quite large. Though, if money is there they should look after their people before exploring space.
Re: Get acronyms right (Score:2)
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If all countries were held to that standard, there would still be no human presence in space at all. And there never would be.
I was in my twenties when I heard the 'prioritues' argument being used against Apollo. Fortunately, now that so many space activities have moved over to the private sector, the argument is gone for good.
Re: (Score:1, Redundant)
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Your worldview confuses me.
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SpaceX doesn't get any government grants. NASA contracts with it for work just as private companies and foreign governments do, when it offers the best competitive price for the loads it can accommodate.
Re: (Score:3)
Exactly the question to which I would also like an answer:-
My email:-
To: info@sightsavers.org
Subject: India
Date: Thu, 03 Aug 2023
*** start ***
What I would like to know is, why are you trying to get donations from British people for giving medical treatment to citizens of, for example, India, when our own NHS is more than half dead through lack of funding?
If India can afford a space programme, nuclear weapons etc etc then it can damn well afford to treat cataracts etc for itself.
*** end ***
As you ca
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I suspect that you have not donated a single penny (or paisa) to any charity, Indian or otherwise, in your life.
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RSPB (for 40 years)
Wildlife trust (for 40 years)
Ukrainian refugees
Wikipedia
Mint
Hospice
The list goes on...
The reason your breath stinks is that you are talking out of your ass.
Re:Get acronyms right (Score:4, Insightful)
ISRO gives India its own launch capability which has civilian as well as military benefits. It also helps support local industry, instead of foreign ones if they'd buy launches abroad. Science missions like these help build domestic R&D, as well as inspire young Indians to pursue STEM degrees. ISRO operates on a tiny budget (a fraction of the country's rural development program) with the aforementioned benefits exceeding the costs.
India is an industrializing nation. Doing stuff like this makes sense for them at this stage of development and makes a small contribution to eventually lifting people out of poverty. The downtrodden poor in Europe weren't lifted out of poverty by government programs either.
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Who fucking cares? The sacks of shit can't bother to fix even the simplest of public works, but damn can they launch some space missions....
I'm fucking done with Indian exceptionalism.
Pretty sure that's America.
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Pretty sure Meat Trains is an exclusively Indian thing. Same with dumping dead bodies in the river that you bathe in. Try again?
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You're right for some; it's not about being 4 letter; the administrations like N.A.S.A. or I.S.R.O are acronyms; but Dell is the family name of the founder, and Visa / Nike are just a cool name they made up for marketing, that happen to be stylized uppercase on the products (like Samsung does).
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Nike's not a "cool name they made up for marketing", but rather the Greek goddess of victory.
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That would be correct if Americans would be able to pronounce her name. ...
As long as they can't it is just an American brand
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I know this is a troll comment, but for anyone genuinely curious, writing word-pronounceable acronyms as words is the BBC's default style. From https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsstyleguide/all/#a [bbc.co.uk]:
Muphry's Law strikes again! (Score:2)
There are three instances, and in the cases of NICE and UKIP the usage is correct.
Why so many orbits? (Score:2)
Do craters and/or water molecules across the surface retroreflect light back at earth observers so that the full moon shows an opposition surge, or equal brightness across its surface, which contradicts the predictions of standard light scattering models?
New home for Bret, the Visa anti-fraud rep (Score:1)
If I had a thoroughly jaded view of the world, I might suggest that this latest triumph of Indian technology could usher in an era when the High Frontier will become new frontier for scam call centres.
Quite the achievement (Score:4, Insightful)
This is quite the achievement. There will be those saying "yes, but its easy when someone else has done it already", but it's not like all the technology and know-how was "open sourced", so India had to learn a lot of it from scratch (not all, but a lot). What's more, they didn't just plonk down next to one of the existing landing sites, they picked something a lot harder - and seem to have done it brilliantly well.
Comments so far look like a lot of them verge on the racist (or worse). That's a shame - this is a country that just a few decades ago was dirt poor, had been mistreated by us Brits and had an enormous, diverse population that couldn't really agree on very much. Somehow they've managed to transform into a space-going nation, who's just got to the Moon. By any measure, that's an awesome achievement, and doubtless a step forward for human science and space exploration.
I'm sure India still has its problems and inequalities like anywhere else. I'd just ask that before we go pointing out all of those things, we maybe look to ourselves first and critically consider if we're really that much better, given we've had longer to get sorted out than they have.
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They are already considered a rival (albeit a small one) to China in Asian business and political influence.
Re:Quite the achievement (Score:4, Insightful)
This is quite the achievement. There will be those saying "yes, but its easy when someone else has done it already", but it's not like all the technology and know-how was "open sourced", so India had to learn a lot of it from scratch (not all, but a lot). What's more, they didn't just plonk down next to one of the existing landing sites, they picked something a lot harder - and seem to have done it brilliantly well.
Did I miss something? You get a future version of the article? As far as the rest of us know they haven't plonked anywhere yet.
Spacecraft Should Have A Warning On It (Score:2)
historic (Score:2)
It's perhaps historic for India, but for the rest of the world, it's nothing new. Yet, anyway. Remains to be seen what the instruments find.