India Launches OceanSat-2 Spacecraft into its orbit

Oceansat-2 is ISRO’s second in the series of IRS satellites dedicated to ocean research. Oceansat-2 Spacecraft will gather systematic data for oceanographic, coastal and atmospheric applications. This spacecraft will study surface winds and ocean surfaces strata, and will study atmospheric aerosols and suspended sediments in the water.

India Succesfully launched Oceansat-2 ( 16th remote sensing satellite of India) and six eoropean satellites within 1200 seconds. The launching took place at Sriharikota at exactly 11.51 AM on 23rd September, 2009.

At the end of 18 minutes of flight, the PSLV’s fourth stage injected Oceansat-2 into orbit at a velocity of 25,000 km an hour at an altitude of about 728 km. Thereafter, spring-loaded action mechanisms catapulted four nano satellites called Cubesat 1, 2, 3 and 4 into orbit one after another. Two more nano satellites named Rubinsat 9.1 and 9.2 remained permanently attached to the PSLV’s fourth stage. Soon after the satellites were put into orbit, Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) satellite tracking centres started monitoring them.

PSLV - C14 had four stages using solid and liquid propulsion systems alternately. The first stage, carrying 139 tonne of propellant, is one of the largest solid propellent boosters in the world. The second stage carried 41.5 tonne of liquid propellant. The third stage used 7.6 tonne of solid propellant and the fourth had a twin engine configuration with 2.5 tonne of liquid propellent.

Click here to Watch the Video of the launch

Chandrayaan-1 lost Radio contact with Earth

Earth has lost another Satellite, Chandrayaan-1. According to numerous reports in Indian media, contact was lost with the lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-1 abruptly -- in the middle of a communications session with Earth -- at 1:30 Indian time on Friday (Thursday, August 27, at 20:00 UTC). India's communications antenna at Byalalu had received data from the spacecraft up to that taken at 00:25 IST (18:55 UTC), including the results of a recent bistatic radar experiment conducted jointly with Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

But Chandrayaan-1 has done its intended work succesfully 90% of the work. Chandrayaan-1 was launched on October 22, 2008 and had been intended to conduct a two-year primary mission. During 312 days at the Moon it orbited more than 3,400 times and returned more than 70,000 images, plus other data. More than half of its instruments were provided by (or in cooperation with) ESA and NASA; several were copies of those on ESA's SMART-1, and one was a duplicate of the Mini-SAR instrument now in orbit on NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. ISRO has posted some images and data from the mission. The photos can be seen by Clicking Here.

India Plans to send astronauts to Space

A manned space flight is proposed before 2015, at a budget of Rs 12.4 billion ($242 million), using a fully autonomous orbital vehicle carrying two or three crew members to 400km (250 miles) low Earth orbit for up to 7 days and back. Development of fully autonomous orbital vehicle to carry a two-member crew into a low Earth orbit has already began. ISRO will set up full-fledged training facility in Bangalore for training astronauts. ISRO is also planning to build third launch pad at Sriharkota for manned mission with extra facilities like entry into the crew capsule and an escape chute.

A 100 acre astronaut training is planned to be completed on the outskirts of Bangalore by 2012 by ISRO in collaboration with IAM Bangalore at a cost of Rs 10 billion.


India and Russia signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Joint Activities in the Field of Human Spaceflight Program during the visit of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to India in December 2008.

As per the agreement, an Indian astronaut will first go on a space mission on a Russian spacecraft (Soyuz, 2013). This will be followed by an Indian manned mission to space in 2015.

The spacecraft is being designed for a seven day mission on completion of which it will splash down either in the Arabian Sea or the Bay of Bengal.

Jugnu - India's lightest Satellite to be launched

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur has come in to agreement with the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) to launch a nano satellite. It will be the country's lightest and the institute's first satellite to be launched in the orbit from Sriharikoita.

Sanjay Govind Dhande, Director, IIT Kanpur said that regular review sessions are being carried out by ISRO to check the progress.

A team of 40 students and around 12 professors, led by Professor Nalinaksh S.Vyas are working out since December, 2008 on the project. The project is expected to be completed within a budget of 2-3 crores.

The Spacecraft weighs around 3.5 kgs and would be 34 cm long and 10 cm wide. Equipped with the micro imaging and micro electronic system, it will transfer the images to the IIT Kanpur campus. The high resolution pictures obtained will be used for different applications like drought monitoring, wasteland management, urban planning and flood risk management.

"Although the stipulated life time of the satellite is six months, we are optimistic that it will complete at least 12 months in the orbit," said Dhandhe.

Hundreds of Black Holes may roam in Milky Way, swallowing anything that gets its way

New calculations at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics suggest that hundreds of massive black holes, left over from the galaxy-building days of the early universe, may wander the Milky Way and will start swallowing what ever comes in their way. Fortunately Earth is safe. The closest rogue black hole should reside thousands of light-years away. Astronomers are eager to locate them, though, for the clues they will provide to the formation of the Milky Way.

Hundreds of rogue black holes should be traveling the Milky Way's outskirts, each containing the mass of 1,000 to 100,000 suns. They would be difficult to spot on their own because a black hole is visible only when it is swallowing, or accreting, matter.

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Space debris around is increasing

The space around Earth is becoming more cluttered by the day with orbital junk that, if left unchecked, will pose an ever-increasing threat to current and future spacecraft, a panel of experts says.

The Department of Defense's Space Surveillance Network, which relies on a global network of monitoring stations, is currently tracking more than 19,000 objects in Earth orbit larger than four inches (10 cm), but there are an estimated 300,000 total objects bigger than a half-inch (1 cm) in size circling Earth. In 1980, the network was tracking just 4,700 objects, about 2,600 of which were space trash.

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