15 ms·

India's Chandrayaan-3 launches to explore moons water rich South Pole

267 points by FlyingSnake 3y ago

N19PEDL2 3y ago
Sad to see ESA outdone again by another country in the exploration of the Moon. That said, congratulations to India and I wish Chandrayaan-3 the best of success.
pipes 3y ago
[flagged]
- vineethkm 3y ago
  >One major investment in an Indian bank, intended to expand financial services for the poor, in fact led mainly to expansion of the bank’s credit card business and corporate lending.< How and why is 'investing' called 'aid'? I would like to see an itemized bill for the whole 2.3B please.
- me551ah 3y ago
  Why is the UK even sending aid to India when their own economy is contracting?
  - gsky 3y ago
    for colozing india for 200 years maybe which brits dont talk about
  - reacharavindh 3y ago
    May be they aren’t, and just misclassified funds so that their public would feel …
- coder_san 3y ago
  *A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “Since 2015 the UK has given no financial aid to the government of India. Most of our funding now is focused on business investments... "* More often than not, reading beyond just the headlines can be helpful.
wanderingmind 3y ago
For the engineers interested in the technical details of the mission https://www.isro.gov.in/Chandrayaan3_New.html https://www.isro.gov.in/Chandrayaan3_New.html
sidcool 3y ago
Congrats India. There will be people here saying "Poor country, donate money" etc, but this is necessary. It will boost the economy and inspire the nation. Some people just don't get that.
- himujjal 3y ago
  Yeah. This is what people miss. I have always seen Space missions as an investment into the future.
  - pseg134 3y ago
    I think people would be more inspired by functional basic services and increase railway safety.
    - tekla 3y ago
      No one is inspired by this, its simply expected.
    - Ketan-fullstack 3y ago
      if only countries can multitask but of course they can only work on space OR railway safety. such a shame.
    - __void 3y ago
      given that space is hard, any progress in this direction has real and practical repercussions for all of humanity; for example, knowing how to handle metals, chemicals, mechanical systems, logical systems (production chains and industrial production), lighter and more powerful computers, human biology and so on furthermore, the fascination with space missions generates hordes of inspired children who will study and thus this plant the seeds of scientists for future generations who will solve tomorrow's problems (in practice, it is a long-term investment) of the race to the moon we now have the practical and common use of transistors and chips, led, batteries, pace makers, medical pumps, thermal insulation and dozens of other things we use and take for granted every day to prefer little and bad immediately at the expense of much and good in the future is a very short-sighted and stupid attitude
stinkypajeets 3y ago
[flagged]
screye 3y ago
Nice to see this. India is poised to have a large aviation and manufacturing industry, yet all the hard-skills are in the west. (GE, P&W, Boeing, Airbus). ISRO and Brahmos can serve as a DARPA-esque seed for upskilling highly talented aviation engineering talent. With HAL, Air India and the aviation industry going private, there might be more opportunities for prospective aerospace experts to build out their own industry after stints at ISRO/Brahmos. India produces amazing mechanical engineers. As compared to other difficult to break in industries (Chips, Hi-tech agriculture, Genomics), India is actually well situated to break into the aviation industry successfully.
- whinvik 3y ago
  I haven't seen any mention of HAL being privatized before.
  - screye 3y ago
    Govt. is reducing its investment in HAL and HAL had an IPO in 2018. [1][2] Ofc, Indian institutions are averse to privatization. So it has been a slow process. That being said, the direction of change is towards steady privatization. [1] https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/indian-govt-proposes-sell-up-35-stake-hal-2023-03-22/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/indian-govt-proposes-s... [2] https://theprint.in/economy/rafale-snub-no-death-knell-hals-market-cap-up-280-since-ipo-launch-is-now-biggest-defence-psu/1620546/ https://theprint.in/economy/rafale-snub-no-death-knell-hals-...
- eldaisfish 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - supriyo-biswas 3y ago
    Are there any sources for your claim that "India's critical space technology is not designed or developed in India" as relating to recent missions such as this one?
  - blahblahblah10 3y ago
hunglee2 3y ago
Congratulations India! The more countries that have independent space programmes the better.
- nashashmi 3y ago
  > more ... independent space programmes the better the fallout of this is spacewar. And billions killed. it is a new frontier for sure. And I am not looking forward to it.
  - otikik 3y ago
    That's unnecessarily pessimistic. It's like saying that the fallout of medicine is biological warfare. Spacewar is a possible future, and I will not deny that. But one could apply the same pessimistic view to not going to space as well. "The fallout of not going to space is resource wars. Billions killed, their bodies harvested in order to extract water and nutrients".
    - nashashmi 3y ago
      Imo, both positions are extreme. I mean to play devil's advocate here. As I think you are doing too. However, it is not "unnecessarily" pessimistic. There are actual fiction books, congressional hearings, military strategies in motion that play out such outcomes. The US has a space force command. And missiles to space have been sent to knock out targets. Calling it a fallout, implies when all things fail and hell breaks loose.
  - dumdumchan 3y ago
    How is it more dangerous than nukes and ICBMs?
    - nashashmi 3y ago
      It is dangerous because of nukes and icbms.
  - danjc 3y ago
7373737373 3y ago
Is there any way to get up-to-date coordinates on it? ESA's Estrack network seems to track it, but there seems to be no public API (https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Operations/ESA_ground_stations_support_Chandrayaan-3_Moon_mission https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Operations/ESA_ground_s...) And asteroid-like orbital elements or NORAD TLE's don't seem to apply here (?) since > A two-line element set (TLE) is a data format encoding a list of orbital elements of an Earth-orbiting object for a given point in time, the epoch. which won't really be true in its later part of the orbit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-3#/media/File:Animation_of_Chandrayaan-3_around_Earth.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-3#/media/File:Anim...) and it is changing its orbit constantly
- 7373737373 3y ago
  Got an answer here: https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/54239/how-can-non-earth-orbiting-satellite-coordinates-be-obtained-by-amateurs https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/54239/how-can-...
  - nnain 3y ago
    This is fascinating!
    - 7373737373 3y ago
      Maybe join us at the https://deeprandomsurvey.org/ https://deeprandomsurvey.org/ then :) Also check out the Virtual Telescope Project, they are the channel when it comes to observing objects live: https://www.virtualtelescope.eu/news/ https://www.virtualtelescope.eu/news/ (we are mostly focused on asteroids)
pyeri 3y ago
Here is the rocket launch video [1]. [1] https://twitter.com/erbmjha/status/1679780106422681601 https://twitter.com/erbmjha/status/1679780106422681601
srvmshr 3y ago
Honestly I do not understand the subtle trolling here. If any country is making a big leap, without biases, just cheer for them. Getting to see humanity's progress, one country at a time, is a better thing compared to seeing none. When the highest populated country facing dozens of social issues, makes a space achievement at a tight budget, they deserve our pat on the back, not ridicule. Sure, they could be a generation lagging in the technology, but they are collaborating with other countries in aviation. Spacefaring is getting bigger, not niche. Comparing them to ESA or NASA is unfair given the gargantuan budgets they enjoy. There is progress and commendable one. Good job India! More miles to your rockets By making comments like "poor country, donate money" and "Brits are sending money [...]" (actual flagged comments here) some of us are showing inherent racism. One world-one people, guys. It is really not that hard.
- proudeu 3y ago
  I agree but if you want to see even higher doses of racism just change India with China and there will be a lot more here. unfortunately the media created extremely hostile environment toward non white countries that are slowly catching up and surpassing western technology
- nashashmi 3y ago
  When it comes to sci/tech/space exploration, it is difficult to segregate nationalism or anti-nationalism from the science and technology ambitions. When the Soviets launched Sputnik, it provoked the US to do the same, with a whole bunch of snickering. When the Chinese started their space ambitions, US became more concerned and argumentative. When the Chinese excelled in supercomputing, Obama tried to rally the nation towards unity in science/tech. Snickering is part of the equation. And counter-snickering with big launches and achievements is also part of the equation.
- pgeorgi 3y ago
  > When the highest populated country facing dozens of social issues ... To put things in perspective: The US declared its "War on Poverty" in January 1964. Tried to send rockets to the moon in March 1964. Signed the Civil Rights Act into force in early July 1964. Got the first rocket to the moon successfully in late July 1964. So it's not like other "space-faring nations" had everything sorted out before "wasting money on space adventures". That entire "They should fix their social net / railroads / ... before entering the space race"-thing is just pulling up the ladder behind oneself.
inparen 3y ago
This is such an good news. I hope more countries join the spacewagon. Space is final frontier for humanity. Once we figure out consciousness, load it into our AI superlord robots and send them for interstellar travel, who knew what they will bring. Possibilities unlimited. A video call with fellow human of another planet will be dope. Till then, live long and prosper!.
jsdeveloper 3y ago
Landing the probe at moon will be the apt reply for both : critics and supporters.
sashank_1509 3y ago
To me whole of India is basically a mini San Francisco. Yes, water is not clean, yes even now poor people need to walk long distances to get clean water and daily ration of rice at a lower price but these are not because the country is in need of money. It has more than enough money to handle the basic needs of most of its citizens, its government is garbage, inefficient, corrupt and ignorable. If we had any CEO of a tech company run India (think Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Shantanu Narayan), they’d make it a relative paradise in a decade, India could easily reach the living standards of Vietnam, South Korea etc. Alas, in that context this technological progress is still a good thing because diverting money to more govt bureaucracies will not fix anything. At least here we see the money going to somewhat good use. Though from what I’ve heard, ISRO is also a bloated bureaucracy, albeit in the same way NASA is a bloated bureaucracy compared to SpaceX (ISRO is for all I’ve heard worse than NASA in how bloated and inefficient it is, I’m surprised they ever manage to launch anything)
MPlus88 3y ago
[dead]
pknerd 3y ago
Found some negative comments by Indians but then this is a typical attitude of subcontinent, people hardly celebrate good things. I experience same here in Pakistan. Anyways, congrats India, this is not something casual. The entire ISRO team deserves the applause. PS: Dumb question, why is it taking so long to reach to that region of moon?
- pidaymuos 3y ago
  Rough terrain,extreme temperature variations,long periods of darkness,communication difficulties with Earth,limited options for safe landing sites,navigation and guidance complexities etc.
herdcall 3y ago
Congrats to India on the successful launch, you can't underestimate how inspiring and source of pride this would be to Indians, especially the young aspiring technologists. Having said that, the hard part is in the landing though, which happens only mid next month.
nojvek 3y ago
Congrats india and wish they make the rover work this time. I’m a believer that humans may take 100s of years to be multi planetary, but we’ll be making increasing semi-autonomous intelligent rovers that help us build habitats in space. Mars and moon is 100% robots. It’s an incredible achievement to put intelligence on other planets. A rising tide lifts all boats.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
known 3y ago
[dead]

267 points by FlyingSnake 3y ago

Sad to see ESA outdone again by another country in the exploration of the Moon. That said, congratulations to India and I wish Chandrayaan-3 the best of success.

pipes 3y ago

[flagged]

vineethkm 3y ago
>One major investment in an Indian bank, intended to expand financial services for the poor, in fact led mainly to expansion of the bank’s credit card business and corporate lending.< How and why is 'investing' called 'aid'? I would like to see an itemized bill for the whole 2.3B please.
me551ah 3y ago
Why is the UK even sending aid to India when their own economy is contracting?
- gsky 3y ago
  for colozing india for 200 years maybe which brits dont talk about
- reacharavindh 3y ago
  May be they aren’t, and just misclassified funds so that their public would feel …
coder_san 3y ago
*A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “Since 2015 the UK has given no financial aid to the government of India. Most of our funding now is focused on business investments... "* More often than not, reading beyond just the headlines can be helpful.

wanderingmind 3y ago

For the engineers interested in the technical details of the mission https://www.isro.gov.in/Chandrayaan3_New.html https://www.isro.gov.in/Chandrayaan3_New.html

sidcool 3y ago

Congrats India. There will be people here saying "Poor country, donate money" etc, but this is necessary. It will boost the economy and inspire the nation. Some people just don't get that.

himujjal 3y ago
Yeah. This is what people miss. I have always seen Space missions as an investment into the future.
- pseg134 3y ago
  I think people would be more inspired by functional basic services and increase railway safety.
  - tekla 3y ago
    No one is inspired by this, its simply expected.
  - Ketan-fullstack 3y ago
    if only countries can multitask but of course they can only work on space OR railway safety. such a shame.
  - __void 3y ago
    given that space is hard, any progress in this direction has real and practical repercussions for all of humanity; for example, knowing how to handle metals, chemicals, mechanical systems, logical systems (production chains and industrial production), lighter and more powerful computers, human biology and so on furthermore, the fascination with space missions generates hordes of inspired children who will study and thus this plant the seeds of scientists for future generations who will solve tomorrow's problems (in practice, it is a long-term investment) of the race to the moon we now have the practical and common use of transistors and chips, led, batteries, pace makers, medical pumps, thermal insulation and dozens of other things we use and take for granted every day to prefer little and bad immediately at the expense of much and good in the future is a very short-sighted and stupid attitude

stinkypajeets 3y ago

[flagged]

screye 3y ago

Nice to see this. India is poised to have a large aviation and manufacturing industry, yet all the hard-skills are in the west. (GE, P&W, Boeing, Airbus). ISRO and Brahmos can serve as a DARPA-esque seed for upskilling highly talented aviation engineering talent. With HAL, Air India and the aviation industry going private, there might be more opportunities for prospective aerospace experts to build out their own industry after stints at ISRO/Brahmos. India produces amazing mechanical engineers. As compared to other difficult to break in industries (Chips, Hi-tech agriculture, Genomics), India is actually well situated to break into the aviation industry successfully.

whinvik 3y ago
I haven't seen any mention of HAL being privatized before.
- screye 3y ago
  Govt. is reducing its investment in HAL and HAL had an IPO in 2018. [1][2] Ofc, Indian institutions are averse to privatization. So it has been a slow process. That being said, the direction of change is towards steady privatization. [1] https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/indian-govt-proposes-sell-up-35-stake-hal-2023-03-22/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/indian-govt-proposes-s... [2] https://theprint.in/economy/rafale-snub-no-death-knell-hals-market-cap-up-280-since-ipo-launch-is-now-biggest-defence-psu/1620546/ https://theprint.in/economy/rafale-snub-no-death-knell-hals-...
eldaisfish 3y ago
[flagged]
- supriyo-biswas 3y ago
  Are there any sources for your claim that "India's critical space technology is not designed or developed in India" as relating to recent missions such as this one?
- blahblahblah10 3y ago

hunglee2 3y ago

Congratulations India! The more countries that have independent space programmes the better.

nashashmi 3y ago
> more ... independent space programmes the better the fallout of this is spacewar. And billions killed. it is a new frontier for sure. And I am not looking forward to it.
- otikik 3y ago
  That's unnecessarily pessimistic. It's like saying that the fallout of medicine is biological warfare. Spacewar is a possible future, and I will not deny that. But one could apply the same pessimistic view to not going to space as well. "The fallout of not going to space is resource wars. Billions killed, their bodies harvested in order to extract water and nutrients".
  - nashashmi 3y ago
    Imo, both positions are extreme. I mean to play devil's advocate here. As I think you are doing too. However, it is not "unnecessarily" pessimistic. There are actual fiction books, congressional hearings, military strategies in motion that play out such outcomes. The US has a space force command. And missiles to space have been sent to knock out targets. Calling it a fallout, implies when all things fail and hell breaks loose.
- dumdumchan 3y ago
  How is it more dangerous than nukes and ICBMs?
  - nashashmi 3y ago
    It is dangerous because of nukes and icbms.
- danjc 3y ago

7373737373 3y ago

Is there any way to get up-to-date coordinates on it? ESA's Estrack network seems to track it, but there seems to be no public API (https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Operations/ESA_ground_stations_support_Chandrayaan-3_Moon_mission https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Operations/ESA_ground_s...) And asteroid-like orbital elements or NORAD TLE's don't seem to apply here (?) since > A two-line element set (TLE) is a data format encoding a list of orbital elements of an Earth-orbiting object for a given point in time, the epoch. which won't really be true in its later part of the orbit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-3#/media/File:Animation_of_Chandrayaan-3_around_Earth.gif https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-3#/media/File:Anim...) and it is changing its orbit constantly

7373737373 3y ago
Got an answer here: https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/54239/how-can-non-earth-orbiting-satellite-coordinates-be-obtained-by-amateurs https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/54239/how-can-...
- nnain 3y ago
  This is fascinating!
  - 7373737373 3y ago
    Maybe join us at the https://deeprandomsurvey.org/ https://deeprandomsurvey.org/ then :) Also check out the Virtual Telescope Project, they are the channel when it comes to observing objects live: https://www.virtualtelescope.eu/news/ https://www.virtualtelescope.eu/news/ (we are mostly focused on asteroids)

pyeri 3y ago

Here is the rocket launch video [1]. [1] https://twitter.com/erbmjha/status/1679780106422681601 https://twitter.com/erbmjha/status/1679780106422681601

srvmshr 3y ago

Honestly I do not understand the subtle trolling here. If any country is making a big leap, without biases, just cheer for them. Getting to see humanity's progress, one country at a time, is a better thing compared to seeing none. When the highest populated country facing dozens of social issues, makes a space achievement at a tight budget, they deserve our pat on the back, not ridicule. Sure, they could be a generation lagging in the technology, but they are collaborating with other countries in aviation. Spacefaring is getting bigger, not niche. Comparing them to ESA or NASA is unfair given the gargantuan budgets they enjoy. There is progress and commendable one. Good job India! More miles to your rockets By making comments like "poor country, donate money" and "Brits are sending money [...]" (actual flagged comments here) some of us are showing inherent racism. One world-one people, guys. It is really not that hard.

proudeu 3y ago
I agree but if you want to see even higher doses of racism just change India with China and there will be a lot more here. unfortunately the media created extremely hostile environment toward non white countries that are slowly catching up and surpassing western technology
nashashmi 3y ago
When it comes to sci/tech/space exploration, it is difficult to segregate nationalism or anti-nationalism from the science and technology ambitions. When the Soviets launched Sputnik, it provoked the US to do the same, with a whole bunch of snickering. When the Chinese started their space ambitions, US became more concerned and argumentative. When the Chinese excelled in supercomputing, Obama tried to rally the nation towards unity in science/tech. Snickering is part of the equation. And counter-snickering with big launches and achievements is also part of the equation.
pgeorgi 3y ago
> When the highest populated country facing dozens of social issues ... To put things in perspective: The US declared its "War on Poverty" in January 1964. Tried to send rockets to the moon in March 1964. Signed the Civil Rights Act into force in early July 1964. Got the first rocket to the moon successfully in late July 1964. So it's not like other "space-faring nations" had everything sorted out before "wasting money on space adventures". That entire "They should fix their social net / railroads / ... before entering the space race"-thing is just pulling up the ladder behind oneself.

inparen 3y ago

This is such an good news. I hope more countries join the spacewagon. Space is final frontier for humanity. Once we figure out consciousness, load it into our AI superlord robots and send them for interstellar travel, who knew what they will bring. Possibilities unlimited. A video call with fellow human of another planet will be dope. Till then, live long and prosper!.

jsdeveloper 3y ago

Landing the probe at moon will be the apt reply for both : critics and supporters.

sashank_1509 3y ago

To me whole of India is basically a mini San Francisco. Yes, water is not clean, yes even now poor people need to walk long distances to get clean water and daily ration of rice at a lower price but these are not because the country is in need of money. It has more than enough money to handle the basic needs of most of its citizens, its government is garbage, inefficient, corrupt and ignorable. If we had any CEO of a tech company run India (think Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Shantanu Narayan), they’d make it a relative paradise in a decade, India could easily reach the living standards of Vietnam, South Korea etc. Alas, in that context this technological progress is still a good thing because diverting money to more govt bureaucracies will not fix anything. At least here we see the money going to somewhat good use. Though from what I’ve heard, ISRO is also a bloated bureaucracy, albeit in the same way NASA is a bloated bureaucracy compared to SpaceX (ISRO is for all I’ve heard worse than NASA in how bloated and inefficient it is, I’m surprised they ever manage to launch anything)

MPlus88 3y ago

[dead]

pknerd 3y ago

Found some negative comments by Indians but then this is a typical attitude of subcontinent, people hardly celebrate good things. I experience same here in Pakistan. Anyways, congrats India, this is not something casual. The entire ISRO team deserves the applause. PS: Dumb question, why is it taking so long to reach to that region of moon?

pidaymuos 3y ago
Rough terrain,extreme temperature variations,long periods of darkness,communication difficulties with Earth,limited options for safe landing sites,navigation and guidance complexities etc.

herdcall 3y ago

Congrats to India on the successful launch, you can't underestimate how inspiring and source of pride this would be to Indians, especially the young aspiring technologists. Having said that, the hard part is in the landing though, which happens only mid next month.

nojvek 3y ago

Congrats india and wish they make the rover work this time. I’m a believer that humans may take 100s of years to be multi planetary, but we’ll be making increasing semi-autonomous intelligent rovers that help us build habitats in space. Mars and moon is 100% robots. It’s an incredible achievement to put intelligence on other planets. A rising tide lifts all boats.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

known 3y ago

[dead]