Comments on: Chandrayaan-1 Feeling the Heat

By: neil

neil — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:38:39 +0000

the spacecraft could be orbiting in continuous sunlight if it were in a polar orbit that from our point of view here on earth would seem to trace a circle around the moon. did that make any sense?

By: Frank Glover

Frank Glover — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 20:16:25 +0000

"The nearest celestial place for us to do "terraforming" is this moon of us with its dead surface."

A large, low-gravity but stable platform with unlimited hard vacuum over all of its surface, not very far away, no existing ecology to damage, just waiting for all kinds of research and commercial activities that would be more difficult or impossible in most other places?

Terraform Mars if you must (though I question the ethics of that, if anything already lives there), terraform Venus if you can, (good luck!) but I submit that the Moon is far more valuable to us just as it is…

By: only_moin

only_moin — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 19:50:54 +0000

although i am not very sure MrCurt, but i guess it has something to do with that fact that the orbital velocites and orbital period of the moon and Earth are so matched that only one surface of the moon is visible from Earth and the other side always remains in the dark, something very similar could be happening with the spacecraft – ie it might slowly be progressing towards the lunar dark side but might take half a month or more to do so, ie the lunar month being of 29 days.

am i making any sense? dont know if this helps or not.

By: curt

curt — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 07:30:21 +0000

I'm having difficulty understanding how the spacecraft can be in continuous sunlight ("experiencing summer") while orbiting the moon. Shouldn't each orbit be half and half sunlight and darkness? What am I missing?

By: john

john — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 23:33:14 +0000

Good work to the Indian crew monitoring Chandrayaan1. I wish them lots of success.

By: dollhopf

dollhopf — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 23:22:49 +0000

The nearest celestial place for us to do "terraforming" is this moon of us with its dead surface.

How strange it might be if you would look up in the sky in dark night and find its disk no longer shine in silver. Would mankind be deadly shocked if the light of the moon would change due to all-encompassing experiments?

The Moon cannot be terraformed, of course. Earth – terra – is a godsend, a unique place in the whole universe. The features of the moon, its mass and its magnetosphere, its formation are completely different, as me and everybody already knows. But could we not try to change the density of the absolute thin atmosphere of the moon a little bit at least? Terraforming need not mean to create a second Earth. Is the moon really without every resource that could be used to create something new on it?

We have a place for experiments of global dimensions right in front of our doorstep. Do we need to preserve the appearance of the Moon? Would it not be nice to arrange terrifying experiments over there? For to change the dead surface of the moon!

By: marcellus

marcellus — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 22:35:36 +0000

It looks like their mission scientists will have to be patient.

By: Hans Bausewein

Hans Bausewein — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 20:59:33 +0000

The mms URL is good if one cannot run Internet Explorer.

Works well with mplayer on Linux (Debian)

By: edu

edu — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 19:30:07 +0000

how much of rise in temperature was expected?what is the set temperature upper limit?

By: Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 15:13:12 +0000

The folks at ISRO have been upfront in saying their movies only work in IE. I will add that in the article above.

By: Wolter

Wolter — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 09:15:36 +0000

The movie link provided in the article here does work in IE but not in Firefox.
Alternativly you could open the following url in windows media player: "mms://msrv2.wstream.net/isro_archive/TMC02.wmv"

By: Feenixx

Feenixx — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 08:45:15 +0000

They are certainly not spending as much on "Web Coolness" as NASA does – hopefully to focus on cool science instead…. and not having to cut budgets for missions in the future.

The downside is that I have yet to see a link to one of their movies and animations that actually works – ah, well, I can live without them. Great work, so far, and I like the cautious approach – learn how to walk before you run.