The Hindu - Voyager breaches solar system

On August 25, 2012 and around 18.78 billion km from Earth, the Voyager 1 space probe became the first human-made object to breach the interstellar medium (ISM), the matter that exists between stars in the universe. The primary reason it has taken a year for astrophysicists to deem this event as having happened is that the signs of breaching the ISM were not all detected simultaneously nor have they been understood fully. In fact, as if playing on their confusion, Voyager 1 beamed home a series of signals in October-November, 2012, that have been studied for their meaning since then. In three papers published inScience in June this year, scientists deduced that the probe had stumbled into a region — lying on the cusp of the ISM — astronomers didn’t know existed. Finally, and with the help of a natural disturbance promulgated by our Sun, astronomers from NASA and several universities, led by the University of Iowa, detected signals from Voyager 1 in April, 2013, that implied the incidence of cosmic rays and the density of ionized gas around the probe had increased, and the direction of the magnetic field in the space around the probe had changed: all signs of Voyager 1 becoming humankind’s first eyes and ears in the world between stars.

When the twin Voyager probes were launched in 1977, the space age was only two decades old. Those who built and now operate them, from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, had the audacity to equip the probes to function for almost four decades (Voyager 2 is currently 15.3 billion km from Earth). The durability of the probes and the careful management of resources have awarded us with the chance to directly study the outermost reaches of the Solar System, within which great astronomical observations are being expected. This attitude of careful management has also paid off with other NASA missions, such as the WISE asteroid-hunter and the Spitzer space telescope before, and should once again with the Kepler space telescope. And while nobody is sure of what to expect from Voyager 1, that the probe is now bathed in particles arising from stars other than just the Sun is opportunity enough. Its particles and fields science experiment will function till 2020, until when the small nuclear battery on-board will be able to power them. After that, the Golden Record, a gold-plated disc containing photos of and sounds from Earth, added to the payload just in case other life-forms encounter the probe, will preserve Voyager 1’s ambassadorship. This second Sputnik moment in the history of human exploration has rightly rekindled the awe humans felt when they first looked into the night sky.

The Hindu - India's Mars Orbiter Mission

Spacecraft, weighing 1,350 kg, is about the size of a large hatchback car

India’s very own Mars excursion — a journey of over 385 million km — is just over a month away as the Indian Space Research Organisation prepares to launch the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) spacecraft between October 21 and November 19 from Sriharikota.

The MOM spacecraft carries five instruments or payloads to study as many aspects of Mars, including the detection of methane in its atmosphere.

Director of the ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC) here S.K. Shivakumar said at a news conference on Wednesday that the spacecraft and its support elements were completed within a year — a very short period — of its approval.

“Things are in final shape. All tests for achieving this and everything that’s required have been done. The ground station network is upgraded and the reception centre reconfigured. We are pretty confident that the PSLV takes this satellite to the right orbit.”

Programme Director M. Annadurai and Project Director S. Arunan said the spacecraft would be shipped to Sriharikota’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre on September 27, a day after the pre-shipment review and a national committee review on September 19.

Mr. Arunan said non-readiness of the larger GSLV had forced India to use a light-lift, low-cost rocket such as the liquid-engine-powered PSLV for propulsion.

As a result, the spacecraft will take over 20 days to get on to the path to Mars and require six orbit boosts whereas other Mars missions take just a day.

As communication with the spacecraft takes 20 minutes each way, it has many components of in-built autonomy to correct itself. The ISRO has developed its own navigation software.

Asked if this costly “me-too” mission would not merely be a duplication of other Mars probes, Dr. Shivakumar said the new instruments were technological gains and India would also benefit from its own experience and perspectives on Mars.

NASA SENDING MISSION

National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) would provide support to the ground-segment operations from the Deep Space Network.About the same time the Indian spacecraft takes off, NASA too will send up its MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission) mission to Mars. But the two will work independently, Dr. Shivakumar said.

“MAVEN is scheduled to leave on November 18 and reach the red planet two days ahead of ours, by September 22 next year. MOM will have an elliptical orbit of 375 km x 80,000 km; MAVEN will take a very close look at its subject from about 50-75 km.”

TOI - Rukmini, GSAT 7 , India s first military satellite

NEW DELHI: India's first dedicated military satellite GSAT-7 or "Rukmini", which will be launched by Arianespace from French Guiana on Friday, will provide the Navy with an almost 2,000-nautical-mile-footprint over the critical Indian Ocean region (IOR). 

Essentially a geo-stationary communication satellite to enable real-time networking of all Indian warships, submarines and aircraft with operational centres ashore, the 2,625kg Rukminiwill also help the Navy keep a hawk-eye over both Arabian Sea and Bay of Bengal. "From Persian Gulf to Malacca Strait, it will help cover almost 70% of the IOR," said a source. 

The "over-the-sea use" Rukmini, with UHF, S, Ku and C-band transponders, is to be followed by GSAT-7A with the IAF and Army sharing its "over-the-land use" bandwidth. The Navy has been clamouring for such a satellite for close to a decade now to shorten its "sensor-to-shooter loop" - the ability to swiftly detect and tackle a threat — but the delay in the indigenous GSLV rocket to carry satellites and other factors have been the stumbling blocks. 

India, of course, has been a late — and somewhat reluctant — entrant into the military space arena despite having a robust civilian programme for decades. Without dedicated satellites of their own, the armed forces were relegated to using "dual use" Cartosat satellites or the Technology Experimental Satellite launched in 2001, apart from leasing foreign satellite transponders for surveillance, navigation and communication purposes. 

China, in sharp contrast, has taken huge strides in the military space arena, testing even ASAT (anti-satellite) weapons against "low-earth orbit" satellites since January 2007. "With counter-space being a top priority, China has been testing its 'direct-ascent kinetic kill' capabilities. It also has active programmes for kinetic and directed-energy laser weapons as well as nano-satellites. By 2020, it hopes to have a space station with military applications," said a source. 

Incidentally, around 300 dedicated or dual-use military satellites are orbiting around the earth, with the US owning 50% of them, followed by Russia and China. But India has lagged far behind in utilization of the final frontier of space for military purposes, refusing to even approve the long-standing demand of the armed forces for a full-fledged Aerospace Command, as earlier reported by TOI. 

Though officially against " any offensive space capabilities or weaponization of space", the defence ministry in 2010 had come out with a 15-year "Technology Perspective and Capability Roadmap" that dwelt on the need to develop ASAT weapons "for electronic or physical destruction of satellites in both LEO (2,000km altitude above earth's surface) and GEO-synchronous orbits". These portions were quietly deleted in the roadmap released earlier this year. 

DRDO contends it can develop ASAT weapons if required by marrying the propulsion system of the over 5,000-km Agni-V missile with the "kill vehicle" of its two-tier BMD (ballistic missile system) system. 

Apart from working on "directed energy weapons" at its Laser Science &Technology Centre, DRDO also has futuristic programmes for launching "mini-satellites on demand" for use in the battlefield as well as "EMP (electromagnetic pulse) hardening" of satellites and sensors to protect them against ASAT weapons. 

But all that is in the future. Dedicated military satellites like Rukmini will help India keep real-time tabs over the rapidly-militarizing IOR, where China is increasingly expanding its strategic footprint, as well as on troop movements, missile silos, military installations and airbases across land borders.

TOI - World 's biggest ever radiotelescope (ALMA, Chile) sees the birth of the biggest ever star of milky way

NEW DELHI: Using ALMA, the most powerful radio telescope in the world, scientists have for the first time observed details of how a massive star is born within a dark cloud core about 10,000 light years from Earth.

ALMA (Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array) located in Chile was able to penetrate the gigantic cloud of gases thought to be 500 times the mass of the Sun and many times more luminous, and see the star forming in its womb. This is the largest star to be seen forming ever.

The researchers saw how matter is being dragged into the centre of the gaseous cloud by the gravitational pull of the forming star - or stars - along a number of dense threads or filaments. These threads extend to upto 3.26 light years, that is over 30 trillion kilometers.

The international research team of British, German, Italian and French astronomers will publish their findings in a forthcoming issue of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

"The remarkable observations from ALMA allowed us to get the first really in-depth look at what was going on within this cloud," said lead author Dr Nicolas Peretto, from Cardiff University. "We wanted to see how monster stars form and grow, and we certainly achieved our aim. One of the sources we have found is an absolute giant-the largest protostellar core ever spotted in the Milky Way."

"Even though we already believed that the region was a good candidate for being a massive star-forming cloud, we were not expecting to find such a massive embryonic star at its centre. This cloud is expected to form at least one star 100 times more massive than the Sun and up to a million times brighter. Only about one in 10,000 of all the stars in the Milky Way reach that kind of mass."

Different theories exist as to how these massive stars form but the team's findings lend weight to the idea that the entire cloud core begins to collapse inwards, with material raining in towards the centre to form one or more massive stars.

Co-author Professor Gary Fuller, from the University of Manchester, said: "Not only are these stars rare, but their births are extremely rapid and childhood short, so finding such a massive object so early in its evolution in our Galaxy is a spectacular result."

"Our observations reveal in superb detail the filamentary network of dust and gas flowing into the central compact region of the cloud and strongly support the theory of global collapse for the formation of massive stars."

The University of Manchester hosts the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)-funded support centre for UK astronomers using ALMA, where the observations were processed.

Team member Dr Ana Duarte-Cabral, from the Universite de Bordeaux, said: "Matter is drawn into the centre of the cloud from all directions but the filaments are the regions around the star that contain the densest gas and dust and so these distinct patterns are generated."

Dr Peretto added: "We managed to get these very detailed observations using only a fraction of ALMA's ultimate potential. ALMA will definitely revolutionise our knowledge of star formation, solving some current problems, and certainly raising new ones."

DNA - India's space dreams

http://www.dnaindia.com/scitech/1855846/report-isro-plans-series-of-satellite-launches-till-march-2014

The agency would send INSAT-3D on board Ariane 5 from French Guiana by the end of this month, he said, adding communication satellite GSAT-14 would be launched on board GSLV on August 6.

ISRO office in Hyderabad

A busy schedule is awaiting Indian Space Research Organisation as it is planning a series of satellite launches both from India as well as from French Guiana.
"In this financial year, ISRO would launch PSLV-–C25 carrying the Mars orbiter anytime after October 21," ISRO Chairman K Radhakrishnan told reporters here in the early hours today.
"As per the schedule, after ejecting the orbiter, it will start its Mars voyage around November 28 or maybe 29," he said.
The agency would send INSAT-3D on board Ariane 5 from French Guiana by the end of this month, he said, adding communication satellite GSAT-14 would be launched on board GSLV on August 6.
GSAT-7 would be launched from French Guiana this year, for which arrangements to ship the satellite out of the country were being done, he said.
SPOT-7 carrying a foreign satellite would be launched on board a PSLV in December this year, he said.
"In January next year, GSLV Mark III experimental mission is planned. Another launch of India's second navigation satellite IRNSS-1D in March 2014 is also planned," he said.
Replying to a query on manned mission to the moon, he said, "Discussions were on with Russia to check the availability of a lander. We are working on it." Elaborating on the preparedness of the next GSLV, he said over 35 tests have been made after a post flight analysis of the GSLV launch vehicle.