CHA CHA JI

Prime Minister Nehru responds to the greetings of inmates of the Sindri Township, which he visited . President Dr. Rajendra Prasad is seen walking behind the Prime Minister.

Mr. C. Rajagopalachari with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Patel immediately after his arrival in Delhi airport.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru paid his first visit to the National Physical Laboratories, New Delhi on October 14, 1950 and inspected its various equipment, evincing keen interest in their working. The Prime Minister is seen watching mediatively the instrument which explains " diffraction effect of sound".

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was among a big crowd of children when he visited and opened a Bal Mela ( Childrens fair ) arranged in connection with anniversary celebrations of Delhi State Balkan Ji Bari in November 1950 in Delhi. Nehru is seen garlanding a girl for her fine performance on the stage.

NASA instrument on Chandrayaan finds minerals on moon

Bangalore (IANS): The moon mineralogy mapper (M3), a scientific instrument of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) onboard India's first lunar mission Chandrayaan-1, found iron-bearing minerals on the lunar surface, the US space agency said on Thursday.

"The mapper spectrometer has beamed images of the Orientale Basin region of the moon, indicating abundance of iron-bearing minerals such as pyroxene. Using different wavelengths of light, the instrument has also revealed for the first time changes in rock and mineral composition," M3 principal investigator Carle Pieters said in a statement hosted on NASA Website.

Data from the 7-kg mapper provides space scientists first opportunity to examine lunar mineralogy at high spatial and spectral resolution.

The Orientale Basin is located on the moon's western limb. M3 captured the data last week when Chandrayaan was orbiting the moon at an altitude of 100 km.

"The imaging spectrometer provides us with compositional information across the moon that we have never had access to before. Our ability to identify and map the composition of the surface in geologic context provides a new level of detail needed to explore and understand the earth's nearest celestial neighbour," affirmed Pieters, who teaches at Brown University in Rhode Island.

The mapper was selected as a mission of opportunity through the NASA discovery programme. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory designed and built the instrument at Pasadena in California.

"M3 will also help in characterising and mapping lunar minerals for knowing the moon's early geological evolution. Its compositional maps will improve our understanding of the early evolution of a differentiated planetary body and provide a high-resolution assessment of lunar resources," Chandrayaan project director M. Annadurai averred.

M3 is one of the 10 instruments onboard the unmanned Chandrayaan, conducting experiments while the spacecraft orbits over the moon next two years.

Five instruments were indigenously built by the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), while the remaining six payloads are of foreign origin, including three from the European Space Agency, two from NASA and one from Bulgaria.

Chandrayaan was launched on October 22 onboard the 316-tonne polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV-C11) from ISRO's Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota spaceport, about 80 km north of Chennai.

After traversing 3,84,000 km through the deep space for 18 days, the spacecraft entered the lunar orbit on November 8 and its moon impact probe was lowered on the moon's surface on November 14.

Isro’s Antrix commercial arm eyes major growth

Bangalore: The commercial arm of India’s space agency Antrix Corp. Ltd is in talks to build three satellites for foreign firms and has at least four launch orders. It is also expecting domestic demand for communication transponders and satellite imagery to drive growth over the next few years.

Launching pad: A 20 Dec photo of the Ariane rocket, carrying the W2M satellite, taking off. Martin / AFP

The Indian space research organisation, or Isro, built and managed the launch last week of W2M, a communication satellite of Eutelsat SA for $33 million (about Rs147 crore), and is building another satellite for Avanti Communications Group Plc.

Astrium, the satellite-making unit of European Aeronautic, Defence Space Co., or EADS, which subcontracted these satellites to Antrix, signed a pact in September to promote the polar satellite launch vehicle, or PSLV, its workhorse rocket for global customers.

“There is a huge unmet local demand for DTH and communication transponders,” said Madhavan Nair, chairman of Isro, in a phone interview.

Isro plans to increase communication transponder capacity to 500 from the existing 224 by 2012, on growing demand from direct-to-home satellite operators and very small aperture terminals or VSAT for business communication. It has 11 remote sensing satellites in orbit and plans nine more, including a few scientific satellites.

The demand for urban mapping in India and high-resolution images at nearly $7 per km, nearly half of that foreign satellite firms charge, is also adding revenue. “Nearly 60% of our revenue comes from domestic customers,” Nair said.

India is still a fledgling player in the satellite manufacturing and launch industry, which is expected to grow to $145 billion to 2016, according to Paris-based research firm Euroconsult.

U. Sankar, professor at the Madras School of Economics, who did a cost-benefit analysis of the space agency in 2006, said the cost of launching a satellite on PSLV was one-third lower than foreign launchers. It is due to the high degree of indigenisation and lower cost of labour, he said.

An analyst says the global satellite and launcher market has entry barriers for India, despite lower costs and capability, due to the limited number of players and launches of satellites a year.

“However, to covert all of them into market opportunities is tough. Europe, America, Russia and China, every one will protect their interests,” said Y.S. Rajan, principal adviser on the space industry for the Confederation of Indian Industry.

According to Rajan, Indian space industry will benefit from down stream activities of space such as receivers, ground support services, satellite imagery and processing, which is expected to double to Rs12,000 crore in five years.