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Communication Lost With Indian Moon Satellite
stoolpigeon writes "All communication links with the only Indian satellite orbiting the Moon have been lost, India's space agency says. Radio contact with the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft was lost abruptly early on Saturday, said India's Bangalore-based Space Research Organization (ISRO)."
They must have asked it something that wasn't on the script!
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Hey India, maned mission next time around, show us some drama.
Before this thread fills up completely with cynical wisecracking Americans, let me be the first to say, as a cynical wisecracking American, go India!
Seriously. You guys have a very solid set of rockets, a good broad focus (China's too focused on manned missions), and the technical skills to make it happen.
See you at Jupiter someday!
I suppose they could have a mobile base that continually moves so as to always stay on the dark side, but wouldn't it make more sense to just put it on the far side and leave it there?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Orbiting the moon is a lot harder than orbiting the earth. The moon's gravitational field is exceptionally lumpy because of concentrations of mass beneath the surface. If not actively corrected for, these mass concentrations will make a satellite's orbit go through increasingly violent gyrations until it eventually intersects with the surface.
I wonder if this is what happened to the Indian probe.
For the uninformed:
When the Soviets launched Sputnik 2 a small dog was on board. The dog had been trained to monitor the primitive electronics on board. Unfortunately the dog was not that good at monitoring the life support equipment and died of suffocation. The idea lived on though but now we use monkeys. They tend to be a little smarter and they can turn dials in addition to pushing buttons. Most commercial satellites now launch with monkeys aboard.
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Imho, "some critics" is pretty weak. You will always find "some critics" to criticize almost anything. When reporters chooses to put them in the report, they are betraying their own opinions and biases or at least saying that the criticism is legit.
I am quoting from a local language news paper ( http://www.keralakaumudi.com/ ) from India:
Preliminary analysis shows that Chandrayan likely failed due to inadequate heat shielding (problem was radiated heat from the Moon) causing some of the instruments to fail (like Star Sensor). They raised the orbit to around 200km (from the initial 100km) to save the mission and it did not help much.
According to the report Chandrayan was successful in completing 95 percent of the mission objectives. The reports also said that they (ISRO) are going ahead with the next moon mission.