Chandrayaan-3: Vikram lander has touched down on the lunar surface

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), which distributes aid, sent India £33.4 million in aid cash in 2022/23. But the FCDO’s annual report, published this week, reveals that the total is set to rise to £57 million in 2024/25.18 Jul 2023

I’m not going to clap and cheer …imo the money involved in India’s space program could have been better spent .
For example relieving,poverty and misery.
For years I’ve been a supporter of a charity then called Help the Aged now Age UK to support a Indian granny who lived a dire poverty with health issues …
This space race thing when there’s so much suffering is obscene.

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Whereas I agree with that the money could have been better spent in our own country Ripple, £33 million seems quite a poultry amount when compared to the £4.6 billion we have sent to perpetuate a war that we can never win and perpetuate the killing of troops and civilians on both sides.
Quote:-
How much money has UK promised to Ukraine?
As the second largest donor, the UK has committed £4.6 billion in military assistance to Ukraine so far (£2.3 billion in 2022 and a commitment to match that funding in 2023).14 Aug 2023

However, no matter how much money you throw at poverty and the homeless here, it will always be present at some stage or other.

Chandrayaan-3: The moment India's lunar rover Pragyaan stepped out for Moonwalk - BBC News (video)

India’s space agency has released new footage that shows Chandrayaan-3’s rover for the first time ever. The video was taken just hours after the country made history by becoming the first to land near the south pole. It shows Pragyaan (Sanskrit for wisdom) exiting the lander by sliding down a ramp and taking first steps on the lunar surface. The Vikram lander - carrying the rover in its belly - had successfully touched down as planned on Wednesday evening.

Pragyaan - which moves at a speed of 1cm per second - is now roaming around the rocks and craters, gathering crucial data and images to be sent back to Earth for analysis. With each step, it’s also leaving on the Moon’s surface the imprint of Isro’s logo and emblem embossed on its six wheels.

The rover is carrying two scientific instruments which will try to find out what minerals are present on the lunar surface and study the chemical composition of the soil. Pragyaan will communicate only with the lander which will send the information to the orbiter from Chandrayaan-2 - which is still circling the Moon - to pass it on to the Earth for analysis.

The landing on Wednesday coincided with the start of a lunar day - a day on the Moon equals a little over four weeks on Earth and this means the lander and rover will have 14 days of sunlight to charge their batteries. Once night falls, they will discharge and stop working. It is not yet clear whether they will come back to life when the next lunar day starts.

So, a walk in the sun and then …

but, in the meantime, there’s work to be done … :hammer_and_pick:

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Isro added that it hoped they would reawaken “around 22 September” when the next lunar day starts.

And So To Bed … :sleeping:

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See article for details.

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another lesson for the ruskies??

Who do you think built the Chandrayaan?

Ah so they give away their good ones and keep the bad for themselves?? - good thinkin 99!!

:thinking:

“We now have a tremendous responsibility to inspire India and the world at levels no less than this landing,” said Sankaran Muthusamy, director of the U. R. Rao Satellite Center (URSC), the ISRO (1) centre that led the construction and integration of the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft and mission.

(1) Indian Space Research Organisation

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO /ˈɪsroʊ/)[a] is the national space agency of India. It operates as the primary research and development arm of the Department of Space (DoS), which is directly overseen by the Prime Minister of India, while the Chairman of ISRO also acts as the executive of DoS. ISRO is primarily responsible for performing tasks related to space-based operations, space exploration, international space cooperation and the development of related technologies. ISRO is one of the six government space agencies in the world that possesses full launch capabilities, can deploy cryogenic engines, can launch extra-terrestrial missions and operate a large fleet of artificial satellites. ISRO is one of the four government space agencies to have soft landing (uncrewed) capabilities.

So, I’m thinking India … :nerd_face:

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On Friday, Isro posted on X (formerly Twitter) that “efforts to establish communication with the Vikram lander and Pragyaan rover will continue”.

I know Omah, but it got bret thinking…He didn’t know either…
:grinning:

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There’s a good reason why travelling and landing on the moon is so difficult. What a very inhospitable place it is. I can’t honestly see the possibility of human life ever surviving there, we can’t even imagine how cold -200 degrees C would be, and materials and mechanics that work well here stand no chance of surviving that kind of cold.

good bloody guess that too!!

yea that’s why were called terra firma - good name for a firm heh - firm earth - good name for a new song too!!

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yea that’s why were called terra firma - good name for a firm heh - firm earth - good name for a new song too!!

But:

Consider, for example, the International Space Station (ISS).

Without thermal controls, the temperature of the orbiting Space Station’s Sun-facing side would soar to 250 degrees F (121 C), while thermometers on the dark side would plunge to minus 250 degrees F (-157 C). There might be a comfortable spot somewhere in the middle of the Station, but searching for it wouldn’t be much fun!

Insulation for the International Space Station doesn’t look like the fluffy mat of pink fibers you often find in Earth homes. The Station’s insulation is instead a highly-reflective blanket called Multi-Layer Insulation (or MLI) made of Mylar and dacron.

MLI insulation does a double-duty job: keeping solar radiation out, and keeping the bitter cold of space from penetrating the Station’s metal skin.

It does its work so well that the ISS presents another thermal challenge for engineers – dealing with internal temperatures that are always on the rise inside this super-insulated orbiting laboratory fully stocked with many kinds of heat-producing instruments.

The basic answer is to install heat exchangers. Designers created the Active Thermal Control System, or ATCS for short, to take the heat out of the spacecraft.

The ISS is designed and built with thermal balance in mind – and it is equipped with a thermal control system that keeps the astronauts in their orbiting home cool and comfortable.

The average temperature of empty space between celestial bodies is calculated at 3 kelvins (minus 270.15 degrees Celsius or minus 457.87 degrees Fahrenheit). Absolute zero, the temperature at which absolutely all activity stops, is zero kelvins (minus 273.15 degrees Celsius or minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit). This makes space one of the ‘coldest places’ in the universe, although scientists and physicists have actually created colder conditions in laboratories on Earth.

Spacecraft that travel into deep space (like Voyager, the Cassini Saturn probe, or the Pluto New Horizons mission) have to protect against extreme cold to preserve their instruments, but they also have to deal with overheating! Because there is so little in space, heat cannot be transferred through conduction or convection as on Earth, instead it is exchanged through emission/radiation. This is extremely slow, so spacecraft can sometime struggle with instruments and technology overheating without the ability to cool down.

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tell ya wot - there seems an awful lot of shere faith involved when ya shut yaself into one of those things - take off and hope to come back not well done both sides!!

Thanks Omah, very interesting. It appears to me that this kind of heat control is only successful on a very small scale. The problems associated with anything larger than the ISS space station on the surface of the moon would be immense. Then you have to consider the effects of almost zero gravity on the human body. This was the reason that only six months at a time could be endured on the ISS. If placing a small community on the moon will be feasible in the future, it won’t be in my lifetime.