Posted on 03/13/2017 1:00:09 PM PDT by ColdOne
No one had heard from Chandrayaan-1 since Aug. 29, 2009. That's when the pioneering moon orbiter — the first lunar probe ever launched by the Indian Space Research Organization — abruptly went silent just 312 days into what was supposed to be a two-year mission.
The orbiter has been missing ever since. It's no bigger than a refrigerator and difficult for Earth-based telescopes to discern given the moon's nighttime glow, making the craft hard to track down. Plus, the moon's lopsided topography — riddled with mascons, or areas of dense material with higher-than-average gravitational pull — makes satellites' orbits incredibly unpredictable.
But the silent, stealthy Chandrayaan-1 couldn't evade powerful radio telescopes. Scientists at NASA's Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California's remote Mojave Desert and at the National Science Foundation's Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia worked together to detect the long-lost orbiter by sending out radio waves in its direction and listening for the echoes that bounced back.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Hey, I think that is pretty good for a first time launching a probe.
Did Wolowitz trying to impress a girl have anything to do with this?
What’s that? About 40%? That is pretty good, considering what the GGG does to a good percentage of them.
Maybe that’s where Hillary stashed the missing $6 billion dollars that disappeared from the State Department.
Careful. It has probably already gained sentience.
VJ’s lander?
V GER
“an orbiter that’s been missing around the moon for 8 years”
Entirely sympathetic. I hate when that happens to me.
It was being probed by aliens for eight years.
Actually it’s been up on blocks behind the barn. Just got it runnin’ again. Took 6 yrs. Just to find an intake manifold.
Hey, is there any beer in that fridge?
It’s a trap!
An M-5 Multitronic computer made it self aware. It was killing satellites by taking their jobs.
Cool, this is going to help improve relations with the Muslim world. Good job NASA.
And also by routing customer service calls to India
lol
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