Other 2008 Events - India

On October 22nd of this year the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) launched its first probe to our Moon - the Chandrayaan-1. This 2,875-pound spacecraft is scheduled to spend up to two years mapping lunar terrain and studying the satellite's minerals from an orbit about 62 miles high. The probe carries 5 scientific payloads from Indian institutions and another 6 from other countries, including the United States.

This artist's concept shows the Indian lunar mission Chandrayaan 1. Credit: ISRO

NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper is aboard the Chandrayaan-1. This device, called the M3, is a 15-pound imaging spectrometer from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The M3 will map the moon's mineral resources (including water at the poles) through high resolution visible and near-infrared wavelengths. NASA officials will then use these maps to plan future Moon mission landing sites.

Other instruments include:

• C1XS - an Europen Space Agency (ESA)-funded payload jointly developed by the U.K. lab, the University of Helsinki and ISRO. C1XS will survey the chemical compounds on the moon by detecting the X-ray signature of surface elements.
• RADOM - a Bulgarian radiation detector.
• SIR 2 - a German near-infrared spectrometer. Financed by ESA, this device will provide information similar to the M3 but on a much narrower spectral band.
• MiniSAR - a U.S. payload from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, specifically planned to accompany M3 to look for signs of water ice near the Moon's poles.
• SARA - an ESA-funded probe, which includes component parts from Sweden, Switzerland, Japan and India. The probe will monitor solar wind particles impacting the lunar surface.

One of India's own devices is a 64-pound impactor to be dropped from the orbiting spacecraft for a nosedive into the moon. Hopefully, this crash landing will also provide valuable data on the Moon's composition.

So, the race is on and luckily the United States is part of this Indian mission so it can plan for it own return to the Moon. And India joins a small club of countries that have been to the Moon - the U.S., Russia, ESA, Japan and China. Rumors are that India plans to put a rover on the moon in 2011 and possibly follow this with a manned mission.

Time to Take a Look Again...

Okay, I have been gone for awhile, so now that I am back and we have a new President, we must be back on track for Mars, right? Let's take a look. How many times is Mars mentioned in President-Elect Obama's Plan for America? I went to his Change.gov and visited the "Technology" section but could not find a single sentence on the Moon or Mars. In fact, I searched the entire site and could not find anything on Mars. Does this mean we are Earth-bound for another generation? This is not clear, but it appears stem cells and patent protection will be more important in the near future than exploring the great unknown. Fortunately, the plan has one section called Invest in the Sciences stating his Plan would "Double federal funding for basic research over ten years, changing the posture of our federal government to one that embraces science and technology." I guess we can fit the space program in there somewhere. I am not sure how that will do against other topics such as addressing the dropout crisis and diverse media ownership, but we shall see.

Note: To be fair, in his December 20, 2008 YouTube address, he did use the word "Moon" once, as shown below: 

Right now, in labs, classrooms and companies across America, our leading minds are hard at work chasing the next big idea, on the cusp of breakthroughs that could revolutionize our lives. But history tells us that they cannot do it alone. From landing on the moon, to sequencing the human genome, to inventing the Internet, America has been the first to cross that new frontier because we had leaders who paved the way: leaders like President Kennedy, who inspired us to push the boundaries of the known world and achieve the impossible; leaders who not only invested in our scientists, but who respected the integrity of the scientific process.