Picture of the Week: Hail CESAR

That is a picture of the CESAR rover, which won last week's ESA Lunar Robotics Challenge. Built by a student team from the Bremen University, the rover completed the task of descending down the steep slopes of a 15-meter deep crater, grab a soil sample, and return it (all in darkness).

Check out the CESAR site for details from the team on their rover (and their experience), and below is a Youtube clip of the victorious little guy conquering a hill in practice:



The lunar surface is a challenging environment, and it'll be a lot of fun to see the variety of designs for rovers that come along, and to see them in action there within the next few years :)

Chandrayaan-1 Payload Spotlight #1: Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC)

Today is the first in a series of features on each of India's recently-launched Chandrayaan-1's scientific payloads.

The Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter (which just Saturday reached lunar orbit) has 11 scientific instruments onboard to complete an array of measurements: five Indian instruments, and six from other nations and organizations (including the ESA and NASA). Japan and China launched similar missions last year, but not with foreign instruments onboard.

This chart below, from the ISRO, shows what types of 'coverage' the payloads as a unit have:

As I cover each of the eleven payloads in individual posts over the next few weeks, I'm going to alternate between the Indian and foreign payloads.

Without further ado, here's your spotlight on the Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC).

Terrain Mapping Camera

An Indian instrument, the first payload being featured here was also the first one to be tested.

It's mostly as it sounds: a high-resolution camera that can take black and white photographs of the lunar surface (with a 5m spatial resolution--"the ability to distinguish between two closely spaced objects on an image"--in 20km swaths[PDF] ), with the intent to map the entire topography of the moon (including the dark side and the poles) at that 5m resolution; creating the most high-resolution, detailed map of the lunar surface to date. Such maps exist of Mars, but not of the Moon.

NASA's Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission set for next year will have similar, if more powerful, camera and mapping systems. These kinds of maps will clearly be useful for the planning stages of the eventual lunar colonies and for other efforts.

The power of the TMC could well be enough to finally settle one thing for NASA ahead of time, though: it could photograph the Apollo and other NASA craft on the Moon's surface, hopefully putting all those conspiracy theories to rest. :)

Here's a picture from the ISRO of the TMC itself:

And, last but not least, one of the test images the camera took of Earth (high resolution here):

For every technical detail you ever wanted to know about the TMC, see this PDF.

Check back within the next couple of days for the next feature, on one of the Chandrayaan-1's foreign payloads, as well as for any other updates on the moon mission's progress that may come along :)

Video: India's Chandrayaan-1 Moon Orbiter

Below is a neat video from the ESA (European Space Agency) on India's recently launched moon mission, the Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter.

The ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization) itself has a 30-minute video online about the Chandrayaan-1, as well, so there's plenty of video to go around to get caught up on India's hip moon mission :)

India Launches Chandrayaan 1 Moon Mission (News)

Today, India's Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully launched it's first lunar mission, the Chandrayaan 1.

An unmanned lunar explorer (a la Japan's Kaguya), the Chandrayaan-1 (which is "moon craft" in Sanskrit) is set to map lunar topography in 3D, creating (as the ISRO puts it) a "3D atlas" and notably, chemical mapping of the lunar surface.

While I haven't found any specific references to helium-3 in any Indian or other documentation of the Chandrayaan project, that prominent "chemical mapping" goal suggests that, like Russia, China, NASA, and others, India is seriously interested in the resource potential of the Moon.

The craft is carrying scientific payloads for six other organizations (check that link for specific pages for each one), including NASA, Europe's ESA, and Bulgaria's Space Research Institute.

This story got some big media play in the form of a huge front-page Drudge Report splash, with a huge picture of the Moon in the place usually reserved for the likes of Obama and McCain. Here's that spectacular image (which ran with an "INDIA TO THE MOON!" headline):

I'm a little surprised at the high-profile coverage, as this Indian mission isn't a whole lot different than JAXA's, which didn't appear to get quite the same sort of media push. I think this speaks to the sort of excitement the Base Race can generate, especially as the significant 2010-2020 decade pulls closer (and as things domestically get more and more grim in the meantime).

The Chandrayaan-1 mission is expected to last for two years, with Chandrayaan-2, a joint Indo-Russian moon rover venture, shooting for 2011.

Picture of the Week: What Ocean?

The above is a picture of two ESA astronauts, André Kuipers and Frank de Winne, training underwater at a Houston NASA facility. The ESA is actively recruiting astronauts as it explores its Moon mission options, with cooperation (like the training above) and more concrete indications of plans to work together on the moon becoming more and more common as of late.

Russian/European Joint, Manned Spacecraft Design Unveiled (News)

The replacement for the oft-used Russian Soyuz craft was unveiled today, and it is a joint project by the European Space Agency and the Russian Federal Space Agency(Roscosmos):


Designed by Russian space firm RKK Energia, this is a craft planned to be used for lunar missions, effectively being the counterpart to NASA's Ares/Orion lunar-mission tag team (which I profiled briefly here at Luna C/I back in May). In NASA's case, the Ares is the launch module and the Orion the manned portion; this new craft is a manned craft, with the launch vehicle undetermined and (as noted in the linked BBC news article) possibly being either an entirely new vehicle or a modified existing Russian rocket.

The Russian-European plans to collaborate are not a set-in-stone agreement, and so the ESA does have a backup plan to continue should the partnership with Roscosmos fall through. Still, it's promising to see signs of this sort of high-level collaboration working, as opposed to, say, tense and outright competition that could lead to cynical (perhaps silly?) 'war in space' scenarios. In my view, if there's a time for humanity to start moving on from the more petty social-geopolitical problems of Earth, this is it. Do we really need to go start churning out terms like "lunapolitical conflict"?

But, for the time being, we have developments like this tentative Euro-Russian agreement (and other cooperation efforts) to nudge things towards what I see, at least for now, as a positive direction.

The Roster Grows: Europe and India

In the midst of a little research, I discovered two more countries/efforts to add to the Base Race roster:

-Europe (European Space Agency)
-India (Indian Space Research Organization; check out that stylin' website!)

While both have projects underway for manned/unmanned missions, it is noted that I don't see a specific reference to lunar base plans. With all the other governments/governmental organizations making similar preliminary efforts (lunar orbiters, men on the moon around 2015-2016, etc.) also having an eventual base as part of their plans, though, it seems like bases for both the above organizations could be inevitable. Might as well build one while you're there, right? You've already made the effort to get there in the first place, so you can go ahead and mine yourself some nice souvenirs (for the folks back home) that can also happen to potentially power your country for an entire year.

So now we're up to the U.S. , China, Russia, India, Japan, Sweden, and Europe all joining in on the great big Lunar picnic that is the Base Race...and the party's just getting started.