Chandrayaan 2: Vikram hard-landed within 500 meters of landing site: Govt

In a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha, Jitendra Singh, said the first phase of descent was performed from an altitude of 30 kms to 7.4 kms

Chandrayaan-2’s Vikram lander hard-landed as reduction in velocity during its descent was more than the designed parameters, the government said on Wednesday throwing more light on ISRO’s dashed hopes of making a soft landing on the lunar surface in its maiden attempt.

In a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha, Jitendra Singh, the minister of state in the Prime Minister’s Office, who looks after the department of space, said the first phase of descent was performed nominally from an altitude of 30 kms to 7.4 kms above the moon’s surface and velocity was reduced from 1,683 metres per second to 146 metres per second.

“During the second phase of descent, the reduction in velocity was more than the designed value. Due to this deviation, the initial conditions at the start of the fine braking phase were beyond the designed parameters. As a result, Vikram hard-landed within 500 metres of the designated landing site,” he said.

Singh, however, said most components of technology demonstration, including the launch, orbital critical maneuvers, lander separation, de-boost and rough braking phase were successfully accomplished.

With regards to the scientific objectives, all the eight state-of-the-art scientific instruments of the orbiter are performing according to the design and providing valuable scientific data. Due to the precise launch and orbital maneuvers, the mission life of the orbiter is increased to seven years, he said…

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Vikram had hard landing; NASA releases images of Chandrayaan 2 landing site

Vikram was scheduled to touch down on September. 7. This event was India’s first attempt at a soft landing on the Moon

NASA on Friday released high-resolution images captured by its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) during its flyby of the lunar region where India’s ambitious Chandrayaan 2 mission attempted a soft landing near the Moon’s uncharted south pole, and found Vikram had a hard landing.

The Vikram lander module attempted a soft landing on a small patch of lunar highland smooth plains between Simpelius N and Manzinus C craters before losing communication with ISRO on September 7. “Vikram had a hard landing and the precise location of the spacecraft in the lunar highlands has yet to be determined, NASA said. The scene was captured from a Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera Quickmap fly-around of the targeted landing site image width is about 150 kilometres across the centre.

Vikram was scheduled to touch down on September. 7. This event was India’s first attempt at a soft landing on the Moon. The site was located about 600 kilometres from the south pole in a relatively ancient terrain, according to the US space agency.

The LRO passed over the landing site on September 17 and acquired a set of high-resolution images of the area; so far the LROC team has not been able to locate or image the lander…

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Chandrayaan-2 performs 3rd lunar-bound orbit maneuver; landing in 11 days

India’s second lunar expedition — would shed light on a completely unexplored section of the Moon, its South Polar region

With just 11 days to go for its moon landing, the Indian Space Research Organisation on Wednesday said it has successfully performed the third lunar-bound orbit maneuver for Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft.

All spacecraft parameters were normal, the city-headquartered space agency said after the maneuver on the spacecraft that is currently in the lunar orbit for its rendezvous with the Moon.

“Third Lunar bound orbit maneuver for Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft was performed successfully today (August 28, 2019) beginning at 0904 hrs IST, using the onboard propulsion system. The duration of the maneuver was 1190 seconds. The orbit achieved is 179 km x 1412 km,” ISRO said in an update.

“All spacecraft parameters are normal. The next Lunar bound orbit maneuver is scheduled on August 30, 2019 between 1800 – 1900 hrs IST,” it said. In a major milestone for India’s second Moon mission, theChandrayaan-2spacecraft had successfully entered the lunar orbit on August 20 by performing Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI) maneuver….

50 yrs of Moon landing: Let’s not forget, or forsake, the lessons of past

The first step is to protect the sites which chronicle our history on the Moon

“How about that package out of your sleeve? Get that?” is certainly not the most famous phrase uttered by a human while on the Moon. And the items nestled in a small packet that astronaut Buzz Aldrin had stowed in the pocket just below the shoulder of his extravehicular mobility unit were certainly not mission critical. They were sentimental objects, intended to be left on the Moon purely for symbolic and commemorative purposes.

Apollo 15 astronauts David R. Scott and James B. Irwin left a commemorative plaque on the Moon in memory of 14 NASA astronauts and USSR cosmonauts. The tiny, man-like object represents the figure of a fallen astronaut/cosmonaut. NASA More than one hundred sites You may be surprised to learn that a partial catalog of human-made objects on the Moon fills more than 20 single-spaced pages.

There are more than a hundred sites on the Moon with evidence of human activity. The sites contain materials from the European Space Agency, Japan, India, Russia, China and the United States. Not only do these sites contain ongoing experiments, they hold invaluable data. For example, engineers are hoping to examine these materials to determine how they have fared after continuous exposure to the elevated radiation levels on the Moon. Along with scientific equipment, robotic landers and other objects left behind to lighten the load for the return home, there are a number of memorial and tributary items.

But perhaps most important, these varied objects, and their position on the lunar surface, alone can reveal the true story of humanity’s history on the Moon. A chronicle which celebrates the persistence and passion of hundreds and of thousands of scientists, engineers and aviators throughout human history who have supported the effort to “slip the surly bonds of Earth” and reach the stars.

Shadows on the Moon: A tale of ephemeral beauty, humans and hubris

The search for water ice on the Moon will be a journey into deep cold shadows at the poles which have lain undisturbed for as much as 3.6 billion years

Between 1969 and 1972, a new type of archaeological site was created. For the first time, human bodies and the technology needed to sustain them altered the landscape of another world. The astronauts from the six Apollo missions left a suite of space-age artefacts behind on the lunar surface. And not only that: the missions brought to the Moon new kinds of shadows, cast by machines and bodies and flags and rovers, in an interplay of movement and stillness.

On Earth, the movement of living things, the changing of the environment, both natural and cultural; and the weather, which occludes sunlight to different degrees, make shadows very dynamic. Lunar shadows, however, are more passive at human time scales, their movement identical with the fortnightly passage of the Sun over the surface.

The Apollo missions brought shadows that were not so passive. The speed of the shadows differed, depending on the activity being carried out, and was much faster than the slow passing of the day. Some shadows were solid black and some were lacy and textured, reflecting the mesh on the umbrella-shaped antennas. They crossed and uncrossed with the angle of the Sun and the movement of the astronauts around the tiny landscapes that constituted their lunar experience. The shadows were captured and frozen in many photographs of the Apollo missions; in these photos, they became another type of artefact.

And then some shadows left, never to return, and others stayed to be swallowed by the lunar night and emerge into day again. The shadows of the objects left behind – descent modules, rovers, cameras and other equipment – will continue to be cast over the lunar surface until they decay in tens, hundreds or thousands of years. The objects don’t move, but their shadows circle them in diurnal devotion, sundials without a mission.

Moon is shrinking like a ‘raisin’, triggering wrinkles and quakes: Nasa

Accordingly, the Moon has turned out to be around 150 feet (50 meters) “skinnier” in the course of the last a few hundred million years

The Moon is consistently contracting, causing wrinkling on its surface and shudders, as per an investigation of symbolism caught by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) distributed Monday. An overview of in excess of 12,000 pictures uncovered that lunar bowl Mare Frigoris close to the Moon’s north shaft – one of the numerous immense bowls since quite a while ago thought to be dead locales from a topographical perspective – has been splitting and moving.

In contrast to our planet, the Moon doesn’t have structural plates. Rather, its structural movement happens as it gradually loses heat from when it was framed 4.5 billion years prior. This thusly makes its surface wrinkle, like a grape that wilts into a raisin. Since the moon’s covering is weak, these powers cause its surface to break as the inside therapists, bringing about purported push deficiencies, where one segment of outside is pushed up over a contiguous segment.

Thus, the Moon has turned out to be around 150 feet (50 meters) “skinnier” in the course of the last a few hundred million years. The Apollo space explorers initially started estimating seismic action on the Moon during the 1970s, finding most by far were happened somewhere down in the body’s inside while a more modest number were on its surface.

The investigation was distributed in Nature Geoscience and inspected the shallow moonquakes recorded by the Apollo missions, setting up connections among them and extremely youthful surface highlights. “All things considered, the issues are as yet dynamic today,” said Nicholas Schmerr, an associate educator of geography at the University of Maryland who co-wrote the examination. “You don’t frequently get the opportunity to see dynamic tectonics anyplace yet Earth, so it’s energizing to figure these flaws may even now be delivering moonquakes..