Scripting a new chapter in its space programme, India recently launched its maiden unmanned mission to moon 'Chandrayaan-I', a research project that propels the country into an exclusive global club of six moon faring nations.
"It is a historic moment as far as India is concerned. We have started our journey to the moon and the first leg of the journey has gone perfectly well," an ecstatic ISRO Chairman G Madhavan Nair said soon after the indigenously built rocket PSLV C-11 blasted off from the spaceport here in cloudy but rainless weather.
The spacecraft was put into orbit exactly 18.2 minutes after the textbook launch at 6.22 a.M. From the second launch pad of Satish Dhawan Space Centre in this island in the Bay of Bengal, about 100 km north of Chennai.
With the successful launch, India became the sixth country after the US, Russia, European Space Agency, China and Japan to launch a moon odyssey.
At Rs 386 crore, the Indian mission is considered to be the cheapest in the world which will help generate the first-ever comprehensive maps of the earth's only natural satellite.
The 44.4 metre tall four-stage PSLV rocket injected the spacecraft in the earth orbit from where it would be guided about 3,87,000 km away from the earth to the circular lunar orbit, 100 kms from the moon's surface, by November eight.
The spacecraft is carrying 11 instruments, including six international experiments, which will help prepare the first comprehensive map of the moon.
President Pratibha Patil, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha L K Advani congratulated the space scientists on the successful launch.
The focus now shifts to ISRO's telemetry, tracking and command network (ISTRAC) at Peenya in Bangalore, which will be the country's nerve centre for tracking and controlling Chandrayaan-1 over the next two years of its life span.
After circling the earth in its highly elliptical Transfer Orbit for a while, Chandrayaan-1 would be taken into more elliptical orbits by repeated firing of the spacecraft's Liquid Apogee Motor (LAM) at opportune moments.
Subsequently, the LAM would be again fired to take the spacecraft to the vicinity of the moon by following a Lunar Transfer Trajecctory (LTT) path, whose apogee lies at 3,87,000 km.
Later, when Chandrayaan-1 reaches the vicinity of the moon, its LAM would be fired again to slow down the spacecraft sufficiently to enable the gravity of the moon to capture it into an elliptical orbit.
After some more procedures, Chandrayaan-1's orbit would be finally lowered to its intended 100 km height from the lunar surface, which was expected to take place around November eight.
Later, the Moon Impact Probe, carrying the Indian tricolour, would be ejected from the spacecraft following which the cameras and other payloads would be turned on and thoroughly tested, marking the operational phase of the mission.
Chandrayaan-I will help prepare detailed maps of the moon, its topography, mineral contents and look for water in the polar regions.
The maps could be of immense help when ISRO and other space agencies plan to land spacecraft on the lunar surface or plan to use the moon as a base for future interplanetary missions.
ISRO scientists spent many a sleepless nights to achieve perhaps one of the most difficult parts of the journey to the moon and faced some anxious moments as rains hammered the spaceport and surrounding areas for nearly five days.
"We lost 10 hours in the countdown yesterday due to inclement weather and almost lost the hope of making the launch. But working against all odds ISRO team has won the game," Nair said.
"The 360-tonne PSLV-C11 has precisely achieved the objective of placing the satellite in the orbit around the earth with its nearest point being 250 km (perigee) and the farthest around 23,000 km (apogee)," he said.
Nair expressed the hope that India would be able to send the first man-mission to moon from Indian soil before 2015 and that mars was the next natural destination for the ISRO.
Chandrayaan-1 was built at ISRO's Satellite Centre, Bangalore, with contribution from various wings of the space agency, including the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram.
The ground facilities of Chandrayaan-I would perform the highly important task of receiving the microwave containing the health information of the spacecraft as well as the valuable scientific information, which the spacecraft sends.
It also transmits the radio commands to be sent to the spacecraft during all the phases of its mission.
Three cheers for India!!! Hip!Hip!Hooray!!!

World Blogging day has come and gone ...and I dont have single piece on the topic "Poverty"..anyway better late than never.Most of the worthwhile things have already been said on Amrita's and Julia Dutta's blog.The singular thought that I had was if we as a nation wasted less food ,then we could see all of our poor fed. Each day as I walk past a three star hotel on our street, I am startled to see how much of rice and good food are wasted and thrashed in the garbage bin...the entire garbage can overflows on to the street with food. Recently, at college at a staff meeting the vice-chairman commented on how they dont know how to dispose of the vast amount of food that was left over in the hostels.They were talking in terms of finding land fills and the sort...pretty pathetic ...till I saw the other day while walking into the campus, a man on a scooter with two large containers of food strapped to the back seat, coming from the hostel.Evidently he and his community had found a worthwhile solutions. If more people distributed the food to the needy before it got bad, it would be a better world.

In keeping with the theme, Mariamma the other day made 'pakoras' (fritters) from quess what...cooked rice!!!!. Some cooked rice was left over so she mashed it with gram dal powder, onions, chillies , turmeric powder and deep fried it- it was quite tasty and the hot fritter went well with the rainy weather outside!!!

holidays

I am towards the end of my 12 days off from work- official holidays starting from Oct1 -Ramzan Id to Oct12th -(includes Gandhi Jayanthi and Dassera festivals) . I enjoyed the extra hours of sleep in the mornings (on College days I am up at 5.15am as the bus arrives at 6.45am and cruises through the shuttered streets of Chennai for an hour and half before arriving at the college gates) and the leisure of reading. Unfortunately the library that was just outside my home was bulldozed down together with half dozen shops that was the barber's, grocery, tailor,xerox ,tea shop as they were part of unauthorized construction and the municipal authorities were looking to widen the road. I felt saddened by its absence as he was well stocked on PG Wodehouse books and Robin Cook's series. I met the owner the other day while he was cycling distributing magazines to housewives and he said they had moved into the opposite street. Well..where there is a will there is a way... Anyway I had a few books that I had bought a year ago and plunged into it. I read R.K.Narayan's Malgudi days - a compilation of short stories on routine life in South India. Enjoyed it. Mariamma ( of breaking chair fame ...refer older posts) insisted on me getting some Tamil movie CDs and I obliged. There is a CD shop closeby and it is home delivery ..so it is convenient. I watched the Tamil heroes jump buildings , climb into fastrains and cars that jumped like it was doomsday while Mariamma danced to the Tamil Numbers ( fortunately she didnt break anything in the process this time). Mariamma also made Dahi Vada - a snack that is a delicacy from North India. It is made from Black gram dal that is soaked overnight and then ground to thick paste. Salt and cut ginger pieces are added to it and balls are added to hot oil and fried till light brown and immediately put in cold water for 2-3 mins. It is then gently squeezed to remove the water and put into the yogurt sauce that is seasoned with roasted cumin powder, green chillies, sugar, little salt, and dash of red chilli powder. Actually Mariamma made it South Indian style which meant she added onions and red chilli to the vada and didnt add sugar to the yogurt sauce. It was tasty nonetheless.

Teaching days

After a stint at grant writing, I am back to teaching M.Sc Biotech students. It has been a trying time as I am teaching a subject new to me - Cell and Tissue engineering to students who are completely new to all the terminology used (no similar subject at the Undergraduate Level) - so it might have been like the blind leading the blind but for my pre-lecture preparations. All my time is spent in it. Either I am lecturing or preparing for it !!! To compound matters, there are some students who sit in the back benches and dont take down notes- and obviously do badly in monthly tests. So I decided to dictate notes in class - this worked for most students. Or so I thought. Till I discovered that one of the students was writing more furiously than I was dictating. He was a picture of total commitment and dedication. But since I discovered that the rate at which I was dictating was less than the speed in which he was writing, my curiosity was aroused. So I decided to investigate. I asked for his notebook which he reluctantly parted with and tried to convey with his smile that the matter that he was furiously writing on was not one that I was dictating. I sat on the front benches ( there are no table and chair for the teacher - that is another matter) and went through his book. It was all about his likes and dislikes - how much he loved music and novels and would be better off with them. He went on pages and pages of his future line of action - business was for him and so on and so forth. He wrote at length of his friends and how he enjoyed hanging out with them. I closed the book and handed it back to him - trying to match his smile with a thought so!! I did not shout at him - as thoughts that he was going through a delicate phase in his life crowded my mind - I just meekly said all this is fine but you must think of Cell and Tissue Engineering sometime too. Two days later he was at the staff room with "Could I have all your notes . I will just xerox them" Wow it was a breakthrough - he was working towards a solution himself!!My day was done.