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Since the launch of the Chandrayaan-3 mission on July 14, the ground stations of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) have been supporting Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to monitor the spacecraft’s health. “Since the launch of Chandrayaan-3, ESA has been supporting the mission by utilising two of the ground stations in the ESTRACK network to track the satellite in its orbit, receive telemetry from the spacecraft and forward it to the Mission Operations Centre in Bengaluru, and forward commands sent from Bengaluru to the flying satellite,” Ramesh Chellathurai, ground operations engineer at...

NEW DELHI: Just days before the Chandrayaan-3 launch, Isro chairman S Somanath has given three main reasons that led to the crashlanding of the Vikram lander on September 6, 2019 just minutes before the touchdown. The Isro chief said the “five engines of the lander generating higher thrust, limitation of the software to detect errors and the small landing site” were the three primary causes for the crashlanding of the lander. “In a nutshell, we can say the (our) ability to handle parameter variation or dispersion was very limited,” he said. Speaking on the sidelines of the India Space Congress,...

India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) may have finally reached the end of its operations after eight years spent orbiting the Red Planet. Ground stations operated by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have lost communication with the spacecraft. The precise cause isn't yet clear; the orbiter may have run out of propellant, MOM's battery may drained beyond the safe operating limit, or an automated maneuver may have cut communications, according to media reports. Having operated at Mars for eight years, MOM — also called Mangalyaan — has far exceeded its expected mission life of just six to 10 months. The...

Things took a disastrous turn when India’s Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft attempted to land on the Moon on September 6. As it approached the Moon’s south pole, where it had planned to land in order to confirm the presence of water ice, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) lost contact with the machine. It was presumed the machine crashed into lunar surface but after more than a month of searching, there has been no evidence of Chandrayaan-2 found

The country's latest lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2, which means "moon vehicle" in Sanskrit, took off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh state at 2:43 p.m., Monday local time (5:13 am ET). The launch was originally scheduled for July 15, but was abruptly called off just 56 minutes before lift-off due to a "technical snag." India is now on the way to becoming the fourth country -- in addition to United States, China and the former Soviet Union -- to make a soft-landing on the lunar surface. The Chandrayaan-2, which weighs 3.8 tons and carries 13 payloads,...

The rover landing is one step in an envisioned series for ISRO that includes putting a space station in orbit and, potentially, an Indian crew on the moon. The government has yet to set a timeframe. The rover landing is one step in an envisioned series for ISRO that includes putting a space station in orbit and, potentially, an Indian crew on the moon. The government has yet to set a timeframe. “We are ready and waiting,’’ said Sivan, an aeronautics engineer The mission would solidify India’s place among the fleet of explorers racing to the moon, Mars and beyond...

After its launch from Sriharikota, it will take one or two months time for the orbiter to reach moon's orbit, the ISRO chief said. While Chandrayaan-I was launched aboard the PSLV rocket, the carrier choice for Chandrayaan-II – a 3,290 kg spacecraft – will be the heavy-payload lifter GSLV Mk II. "The rover has been designed in such a way that it will have the power to spend a lunar day or 14 Earth days on the moon's surface and walk up to 150-200 km. It will do several experiments and on-site chemical analysis of the surface," Dr Sivan said....

Sriharikota: The Indian Space Research Organisation or ISRO achieved another milestone today as it successfully launched the Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle or GSLV-D5 from the space port at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. The advanced GSAT-14 communications satellite that GSLV-D5 is carrying has also been separated from the rocket and placed into orbit. The Rs. 350-crore mission marks India's entry into the multi-billion dollar commercial launcher market on a fully indigenous large rocket. An India-made cryogenic engine powers the GSLV-D5, which stands almost 50 meters tall (as high as a 17-storey building) and weighs a whopping 415 tons (as much 80...

SRIHARIKOTA: When Pakistani troops took positions in Kargil in 1999, one of the first things Indian military sought was GPS data for the region. The space-based navigation system maintained by the US government would have provided vital information, but the US denied it to India. A need for an indigenous satellite navigation system was felt earlier, but the Kargil experience made the nation realise its inevitability. On Friday, the Indian Space Research Organisation took the nation closer to the goal, which it would achieve in less than two years. The result, the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) will be...

Even as the first Indian spacecraft to Mars hovers around Earth to zip off into space this month-end, scientists are agog about the latest Mars-bound visitor; an object that could be our orbiter’s companion of sorts there next year. NASA on Monday shot off MAVEN, its 21st Mars venture, directly towards the planet from Florida. Assuming that controllers at ISRO put their Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) also on that track by December 1, MOM is due to arrive around Mars on September 24, 2014, two days after MAVEN would have. It could arguably be a rare tango of two separate,...

Monday’s engine firing only raised MOM’s apogee (farthest point to Earth) from 71,623 km to 78,276 km compared to the originally planned apogee of about 100,000 [1 lakh] km), said ISRO in a press release. This is the first serious problem to strike MOM in space. And it seemed clear to me something might be amiss when ISRO failed to quickly announce a successful completion of the 4th firing as had been the pattern for the initial three burns. The premature shutdown of the liquid fueled 440 Newton main engine “imparted an incremental velocity of 35 metres/second as against 130...

The 1,350 kilogram (2,980 pound) orbiter, also known as ‘Mangalyaan’, is slated to blast off as early as Oct. 28 atop India’s highly reliable Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) from a seaside launch pad in Srihanikota, India. ... NASA is providing key communications and navigation support to ISRO and MOM through the agency’s trio of huge tracking antennas in the Deep Space Network (DSN). As India’s initial mission to Mars, ISRO says that the mission’s objectives are both technological and scientific to demonstrate the nation’s capability to design an interplanetary mission and carry out fundamental Red Planet research with a...

Canada's first military satellite is headed into orbit alongside six other satellites that were all launched aboard a single Indian rocket Monday morning. The ‘Sapphire’ will increase Canada’s ability to protect its "assets and interests" in space and track man-made objects in orbit to avoid collisions, according to the Department of Defence. A second Canadian satellite will help scientists keep track of meteors, asteroids and other space debris that could be heading towards earth. The NEOSSat (Near-Earth Object Surveillance Satellite) will also track space debris in orbit, to better understand their movements. The NEOSSat and the Sapphire are among seven...

India could be part of the 2016 NASA Lunar Mission with its space agency ISRO mulling a collaboration with the US-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory on study of farther side of the moon. "We are in the planning phase, for a joint mission with Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the NASA. The mission involves getting samples from the moon and JPL wanted ISRO to get the communication module," ISRO Chairman K Radhakrishnan told reporters here. Speaking after the successful launch of Resourcesat-2 from the spaceport here, he said, "ISRO is one of the three candidates NASA could be considering for the...

CHENNAI: With the successful launch of Cartosat-2B on Monday, India has reached a `critical constellation' of 10 active remote sensing satellites in space, which gives it a clear edge in the region for monitoring borders and movements across them. While mapping and infrastructure development are seen as primary applications of a remote sensing satellite, its use in spying is often underplayed. A combination of four Cartosats (1,2,2A and 2B) hovering 630 km above earth allows India to keep areas under close and prolonged surveillance. Multiple satellites ensure that a particular geographical area can be `revisited' every 48 hours. Three of...

Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C15) of ISRO has successfully placed 5 satellites. The advanced CARTOSAT - 2B is the major payload accompanied by four auxiliary satellites. The interesting part of this launch is, particularly for Indian engineering academics is one of the satellite called STUDSAT, a pico-satellite weighing less than 1 kg, is made by students from a consortium of seven engineering colleges in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Few days back ISRO had launched RH200 rocket carrying payload developed by students from Vellore Institute of Technology University (VITU). This is clearly a big opportunity for space technology addicts, so they...

Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C15) of ISRO has successfully placed 5 satellites. The advanced CARTOSAT - 2B is the major payload accompanied by four auxiliary satellites. The interesting part of this launch is, particularly for Indian engineering academics is one of the satellite called STUDSAT, a pico-satellite weighing less than 1 kg, is made by students from a consortium of seven engineering colleges in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Few days back ISRO had launched RH200 rocket carrying payload developed by students from Vellore Institute of Technology University (VITU). This is clearly a big opportunity for space technology addicts, so they...

To commemorate the 90th birth anniversary of Vikram Sarabhai, the father of the Indian space programme, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Wednesday unveiled its most ambitious people-oriented project yet. Bhuvan – Sanskrit for ‘Earth’ – is a remote-sensing 3D image portal that promises to take on the likes of popular virtual globe-mapping applications such as Google Earth and Wikimapia. What’s more, it is technically superior on paper! The most interested feature for users will be the ability of Bhuvan to zoom far closer than the aerial view from a chopper. While Google Earth restricts zooming to 200 metres...

With Chandrayaan-I less than half way (1, 64, 600 km) to its rendezvous with the Moon, Indian space establishment’s credentials seem good enough for job inquiries from scientists from around the world. “I have got 10 to 12 (emails),” Chandrayaan project director Dr M Annadurai told the Hindustan Times, adding, “and am sure some of my bosses have also got such mails.” And all these came after the Chandrayaan launch. These feelers are mostly from scientists of US’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA). They want to work for the Indian Space Research Organisation...

CHENNAI: Chandrayaan-1, now on its way to the moon, has cost less than one-tenth of the Indian Premier League (IPL) rights bagged by Sony Entertainment. Rocket science may be no match for cricket when it comes to listing some of India's favourite things, but the frugality of its space odyssey could be a lesson to the world. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) spent just over Rs 380 crore (about half the price of a Jumbo Jet) on Chandrayaan-1, with 1,000 scientists toiling over it for three years. A similar effort by NASA or any other space agency would have...