Want your name to float around in space? Log on to NASA

Want your name to float around in space? Log on to NASA

Washington: For people who want their names to float around in space, NASA has created a website that would enable anyone to place their name on the agency’s Glory satellite. The “Send Your Name Around the Earth” Web site enables everyone to take part in the science mission and place their names in orbit for years to come.

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The Web site, where participants can submit their information, is located at: http://polls.nasa.gov/utilities/sendtospace/jsp/sendName.jsp Participants will receive a printable certificate from NASA and have their name recorded on a microchip that will become part of the spacecraft. NASA’s Glory satellite is the first mission dedicated to understanding the effects of particles in the atmosphere and the sun’s variability on our climate.

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The Glory satellite will allow scientists to measure airborne particles more accurately from space than ever before. The particles, known as “aerosols,” are tiny bits of material found in Earth’s atmosphere, like dust and smog. “Undoubtedly, greenhouse gases cause the biggest climatic effect,” said Michael Mishchenko, the Glory project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. “But, the uncertainty in the aerosol effect is the biggest uncertainty in climate at the present,” he added. Glory will carry two scientific instruments, the Aerosol Polarimetry Sensor, or APS, and the Total Irradiance Monitor, or TIM, and two cameras for cloud identification.

The APS instrument will help quantify the role of aerosols as natural and human-produced agents of climate change more accurately than existing measurement tools. The TIM instrument will continue 30 years of measuring total solar irradiance, the amount of energy radiating from the sun to Earth, with improved accuracy and stability. Understanding the sun’s energy is an important key to understanding climate change on Earth. Glory is scheduled for launch in June 2009 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Glory will orbit as part of the Afternoon Constellation, or “A-Train,” a series of Earth-observing satellites.
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Chandrayaan-1 may be launched on Oct 19
http://sify.com/news/scitech/fullstory.php?id=14761398

Weather permitting, India's maiden moon mission, Chandrayaan-1, may lift off on October 19 from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, scientists associated with the odyssey indicated on Thursday.
"The tentative date is October 19," they said in Bangalore after completing all the work on the cuboid-shaped 590 kg spacecraft that will carry 11 payloads.
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Meanwhile, the government on Thursday approved a sequel to the mission few years down the line.
"The Union cabinet today gave its approval for undertaking lunar mission Chandrayaan-2 and upgrading the associated existing ground segment at a total cost of Rs 425 crores (Rs 4.25 bn)," Information and Broadcasting Minister P R Dasmunsi told reporters in New Delhi after a cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Chandrayaan-1 will be launched by indigenous Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and will carry payloads of six foreign countries - the US, Britain, Germany, Sweden and Bulgaria - apart from those of India.
Scientists said that the Chadrayaan-1 spacecraft would be shipped later this month, most likely on September 30, to the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota for the launch.
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"We have completed the integration of the satellite," Chandrayaan-1 director M Annadurai told reporters at ISRO Satellite Centre in Bangalore.
Chandrayaan-1, estimated to cost nearly Rs 4 billion, will beam back digital elevation maps of the moon and its mineral concentration, as also carry out environmental studies and measure radioactivity on the lunar surface.
It will try to find the traces of atomic elements such as Radon, Uranium and Thorium.


Source:Sify