India's Mars mission Q&A: what will Mangalyaan discover?

.. India becomes fourth nation to celebrate reaching Mars – and the first to manage it on first attempt India's Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft has shared its first images of Mars after entering the red planet's orbit on its very first attempt. The country's space agency became the fourth to successfully put a satellite in orbit around Mars – and the first to manage it on its first try. Prime Minister Narendra Modi called for a national day of celebration as it began circling Mars. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) later uploaded a picture (above) of the planet on its Mars Orbiter twitter account with the caption: "The view is nice up here." The image, which was taken from a height of 7,300km, was printed out and presented to Prime Minister Modi, who had previously joked that the mission's budget was lower than the sci-fi film Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock. The Mars Orbiter Mission – known as Mangalyaanor or Mom – has been lauded for its relatively low price tag – just £45m, less than the cost of a Premier League footballer. The satellite will study the Martian atmosphere from orbit and will not land on the surface of the planet, says the Daily Telegraph. The Mars Orbiter Mission joins the US's Maven satellite in orbit around Mars. Maven, which is also studying the atmosphere, reached the red planet...
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Kepler-37 Planetary System

NASA's Kepler mission has discovered a new planetary system that is home to the smallest planet yet found around a star like our sun, approximately 210 light-years away in the constellation Lyra. The line up compares artist's concepts of the planets in the Kepler-37 system to the moon and planets in the solar system. The smallest planet, Kepler-37b, is slightly larger than our moon, measuring about one-third the size of Earth. Kepler-37c, the second planet, is slightly smaller than Venus, measuring almost three-quarters the size of Earth. Kepler-37d, the third planet, is twice the size of Earth. A "year" on these planets is very short. Kepler-37b orbits its host star every 13 days at less than one-third the distance Mercury is to the sun. The other two planets, Kepler-37c and Kepler-37d, orbit their star every 21 and 40 days. All three planets have orbits lying less than the distance Mercury is to the sun, suggesting that they are very hot, inhospitable worlds. Illustration credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech, Note: For more information, see PIA16693: A Tiny Planet (Artist's Concept) and NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers Tiny Planet System.Source: Mine...
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Nasa's Sampex Mission: A Space Weather Warrior

Image above: An artist's rendition of the Solar, Anomalous, and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer or SAMPEX. Credit: NASA. NASA's very first small explorer, the Solar, Anomalous, and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer or SAMPEX, was launched July 3, 1992 to study the zoo of particles and cosmic rays surrounding Earth. Surviving much longer than its expected mission of three years and providing invaluable observations for those who study space weather, the SAMPEX mission is now almost over. In early November, the spacecraft's orbit will decay enough that it will re-enter Earth's atmosphere, burning up completely on re-entry. When SAMPEX launched, the sun was just finishing the peak of its 11-year solar cycle and beginning to move toward solar minimum. Scientists were eager to watch what happened in near-Earth space in those first few years, as eruptions on the sun shot out energy and solar material and eventually tapered down into a period of quiet. However, those same effects were also predicted to lead to the spacecraft's demise. As the sun once again ramped up to solar maximum around 2000, the sun's output would create enough atmospheric drag that SAMPEX was expected to tumble out of its stable orbit. Contrary to such predictions, SAMPEX is still in orbit having survived that maximum and continuing in orbit long enough...
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Lunar orbiter captures huge crater on moon

In this handout picture released late November 14, 2008, shows the surface of the moon taken by Moon Impact Probe shortly before landing after separation from India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. Hindustan Times, London, ANI: NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured shots of a massive Aristarchus crater on moon, which is even visible to the naked eye. The space probe flew over the moon at just 16.2 miles up to take shots of the crater that was created when a huge comet or asteroid slammed into a plateau on the surface. Sixteen miles up is just over twice the height that jets fly on Earth. The cliffs of the Aristarchus crater are two miles high twice as deep as the Grand Canyon with layers of minerals exposed by the huge impact tumbling into the crater below, the Daily Mail reported. The archaeology of the mammoth crater almost resembles a Strip Mine on earth cutting deep into the layers of minerals on the moon. The planners of Apollo missions had placed Aristarchus crater high on their list of targets for human exploration on the moon. Aristarchus crater is situated on the southeast edge of the Aristarchus Plateau. The floor of Aristarchus crater provides explorers a unique opportunity to study a great variety of lunar rocks and geologic processes, perhaps including how lunar granite forms.Source: Hindustan Time...
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Russian moonshot dream revived

Russia’s Energia Space Corporation has proposed a joint project with Kazakhstan and Ukraine to launch missions to the Moon. It says it could contribute its heavy rocket that launched the Soviet Buran space shuttle. Ukraine could contribute side boosters for this rocket, and Kazakhstan, facilities at its Baikonur spaceport.The proposed system would lift about 70 tons to low Earth orbit. Tags: Energia corporation , Sci-Tech, News, Russia, World, spacecraft, Читать далее, Source: Voice of Russia...
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