India Launches first moon mission Wednesday

[taku]

Kinda cool, I hope they find some new info about the moon. India plans to take high res images of the moon, with focus on the "shaded" polar regions.





http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/10/21/india.space/index.htmlv

NEW DELHI, India (CNN) -- India launched its first lunar mission on Wednesday, with hopes of achieving high-resolution images of the moon's topography and diving into the international space race.

Despite the numerous missions to the moon over the past 50 years, "we really don't have a good map of the moon," said Miles O'Brien, CNN chief technology and environment correspondent. "The goal is to come up with a very intricate, three-dimensional map of the moon."

The unmanned Chandrayaan-1 is carrying payloads from the United States, the European Union, and Bulgaria, and India plans to share the data from the mission with other programs, including NASA.

The United States and the Soviet Union dominated the field of lunar exploration from the late 1950s. The United States is preparing for its own mission slated for next spring -- the first U.S. lunar mission in more than a decade, according to NASA.

Most recently India's fellow Asian nations, China and Japan, put lunar orbiters in place. Japan launched the Kaguya orbiter in October 2007, followed by China's launch of the Chang'e mission a few weeks later.

"Each nation is doing its own thing to drive its research technology for the well-being of that nation," AP quoted Charles Vick, a space analyst for the Washington think tank GlobalSecurity.org, as saying.

[skimboarder]

sweet, they're only 60 years late!

[nick]

ANYONE ELSE THINK THAT MAYBE THEY SHOULD BE SPENDING THAT MONEY ON THE MILLIONS OF STARVING PEOPLE IN THEIR COUNTRY?

(ourselves as well?)

Space is cool, but ƒuck it... there's so much more important stuff that needs attention/funding

[caprice sun]

skimboarder, not really, its an unmanned ship, they arent trying to put people on the moon like we did. They are creating a map, something according to what taku's post states has never been done before. It sounds like their is a multinational movement towards space which is pretty cool since this planet is pretty much shot

[caprice sun]

nick, i dont know, things like this usually give a country pride, something like a trip to the moon for india, if it is successful, could give the country a new found sense of pride resulting in their peoples investment in their own country which will do nothing but help their economy freeing up more money for funding of projects like you said as well as the creation of new jobs in space programs for those starving people that you mentioned.

[chriscut]

i agree nick. some of my coworkers went to india a couple months back.. their driver (apparently the roads and traffic is so ridiculous that you dont want to drive there) only made 40 bucks a month. They tipped the guy like 70 bucks for the three weeks they were out there and the guy was SO happy. It's a totally different world out there.. of course this wasn't in a nice part of india..

[POPTART]

[Lollar]