Chandrayaan-1 Rocks The Moon

Chandrayaan-1, the first Lunar spacecraft created and sent by India, has started to send back data from it's Moon Mineralogy Mapper. This is an example of the highly detailed images that are being sent to Earth.

The composite image consists of a subset of Moon Mineralogy Mapper data for the Orientale region. The image strip on the left is a color composite of data from 28 separate wavelengths of light reflected from the moon. The blue to red tones reveal changes in rock and mineral composition, and the green color is an indication of the abundance of iron-bearing minerals such as pyroxene. The image strip on the right is from a single wavelength of light that contains thermal emission, providing a new level of detail on the form and structure of the region's surface.
The Moon Mineralogy Mapper provides scientists their first opportunity to examine lunar mineralogy at high spatial and spectral resolution.

It is these types of missions that will be truly valuable as we attempt to colonize the Moon. With prior knowledge of the mineral content of these Lunar sites, we can better determine where to mine for the minerals that will be needed to construct and maintain any Lunar habitat. The sooner we do this preliminary work the sooner we can all head out to the MOON!

India is Heading to The Moon!

On Tuesday, the first Indian mission to the Moon, the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, finished it's 5 ever-expanding loops around the earth and fired it's rocket thrusters for a 2.5 minute burn, taking it directly into the path towards Lunar orbit. The image below shows the various orbits the spacecraft took. (Click to enlarge)

Chandrayaan-1 is now on it's way to a rendezvous with the Moon, which it will reach on November the 8th. Once it does that, the engine will be run again to slow it down and achieve what scientists call "lunar orbit insertion." Once this happens the Moon's gravity will slow the spacecraft down and keep it in an elliptical orbit. Several tricky maneuvers will slow it down further until it settles into a circular orbit, 100 kilometers above the surface of the Moon.
The spacecraft is being monitored from the Spacecraft Control Centre at the Indian Space Research Organisation’s ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bangalore, India. This is the ISRO's first spacecraft to travel away from Earth orbit.
-FUPPETS- wants to see the entire world, or at least those nations wealthy and educated enough to do so, involved in the exploration of space and the development of better equipment to achieve these goals.