Communication With Chandrayaan-I Lost

i wonder, when the dust settles, how much the Indian spacecraft will have cost per day vs LRO (or per Gb of data, or some other metric). The US effort has cost at least 20 times as much, but if it returns valuable data for 20 times as long then it makes the bitter financial pill rather easier to swallow.

Nonetheless, it was a stunning effort as a first deep space mission - kudos to india!

Bob Shaw

I am truly saddened to see the demise of this amazing mission.

I guess Chandrayaan-I wont be helping NASA monitor the LCROSS impact now? As I stood there and watched Methuselah launch last night from my front yard ( a spectacular sight btw). It occurred to me that with all the budget constraints that Washington has put on NASA the last 30 years I should be happy with any launch at all much less something beyond LEO robotic or not.. So no more dissing the shuttle for me I guess any human space program is better than none. I sit and I read all the frustration and opinions on web site .. I understand all of this, I do. I want something beyond LEO myself although I don't see it happening any time soon ( like the next couple of decades) I still try to stressed to my kids how important it is. It human nature to want more to know more but " no bucks no Buck Rodgers". So fly on Methuselah LEO is better than nothing,sadly.

"i wonder, when the dust settles, how much the Indian spacecraft will have cost per day vs LRO (or per Gb of data, or some other metric). The US effort has cost at least 20 times as much, but if it returns valuable data for 20 times as long then it makes the bitter financial pill rather easier to swallow."

Dear Bob,

The only reason things are "cheaper" in India is because of how their currency is valued against the dollar. They don't do things any better or faster than anyone else. The laws of physics are the same everywhere, and totally ignore the laws of international currency speculators.

You probably hate the DOT, the NHTSA, and EPA because they won't permit the Tatas to be sold here. Well, guess what? When they eventually are permitted to be sold here, they will cost a lot more than they do in India.
I suppose that you should investigate buying a "gray market" Tata in Mexico and sneak it in.

By the way, please tell me what the company you work for produces so I can buy an imported item instead.

Cheers!

No images from the LRO this month. And the recent chinese, japanese, and Indian probes give almost no useful images. Clementine gave almost no useful images of the moon.

The best images are still from 40 yrs ago except for the few given recently by the LRO.

Doesn't anyone else think that this is suspicious? What is up there that they can't release the images in real time? Why can't we have the uncompressed, RAW images?

Didn't NASA get the Obama memo on "transparency" in government?

Right after we audit the fed we need to audit the data files of NASA.

I don't believe in conspiracies, but I do find it rather irritating that we don't get lunar images at rate we get photos from Mars.

We got about 20-30 photos from Chandrayaan-1. This is nothing compared to yet other 70 000 they claim they've taken.

We got about 10 photos from Chang'e-1 plus a low-res map.

We're about to get all raw data from Kaguya in about a month. Which is good.

We are getting one big image from the LRO team in about 5 days. It's good, but I'd really like to see at least one image per day, or 5-6 per week.

Well said, Fred - Given everything else going on in the world, if the US gets a man-rated Delta IV-H and an updated Apollo CSM, both with IOC by 2015, STS until replacement, and ISS until 2020, from the Augustine revise, I'd be content...at this point, I've seen multiple "aim for the stars" efforts to augment/replace the STS (X-33/RLV, SEI, VSE, etc) come to naught because of poor choices by people who get paid plenty of money to make wise choices.

Given the decades-old airframes and systems DoD is asked to keep going through rebuilds, SLEPs, and model upgrades (C-130 is a prime example, but there are plenty of others, ranging from the M-16 to the CVN-68) a design and operations policy based on improving what we have is the only way for NASA to go, and the sooner the better.

Delta IV-H and an updated Apollo CSM for LEO-ISS, to start.

Guys - LRO isn't even in its final mapping orbit yet! Get a GRIP! This stuff takes time! That they've released uncalibrated, pre-formal-science-mission pics is actually kind of surprising, tho no doubt prompted by the Apollo-11 anniversary (and prodded by NASAWatch :)

Very sorry for the ISRO. I was working LCROSS flight ops on Sat morning when we heard the news over the flight ops loop. Felt like I'd been punched in the stomach. My heart goes out to those guys.

Emory Stagmer
C&DH Flight Software Lead for NASA's LCROSS mission
Northrop Grumman Tech Services SSC
(speaking, of course, only for myself and not NG or NASA)

I agree with Zvezdichko I'm not a conspiracy theory guy either but the quantity and rate of the data from every lunar probe since clementine has been mind numbingly slow.. Kaguya had some nice strips ( .tiffs and hd movies) But you know there is ALOT more data than what we have ever seen. Whats the point of not releasing it? I don't see any point at all? If someone here can give me a valid point for not release data from lunar probes please do so ... Even Smart 1 had very little data. compared to mission time.. I know there is more and its just frustrating.I don't even want to talk about LRO There has been I know at the very least 100 LROC images taken and we get a scant couple of frames here and there? Makes no sense. None and there is no valid reason for it.. plain and simple.

Please note: I understand Kaguya was JAXA and isnt affiliated with NASA but the same deep space network was used to track it.

"i wonder, when the dust settles, how much the Indian spacecraft will have cost per day vs LRO (or per Gb of data, or some other metric). The US effort has cost at least 20 times as much, but if it returns valuable data for 20 times as long then it makes the bitter financial pill rather easier to swallow."

Bob,

The cost of LRO is somewhare between 7 and 8 times as much as Chandrayaan-1.

Also, for Fred Sanford and Zvezdichko, LROC has around 25 - 30 images on their website from LRO. If you haven't seen them, i suggest that you check them out. You can go to LRO, then see the LROC (which is the camera on LRO)

Now is that cost per equipment and launch all together fuel etc or are you talking about running the equipment and tracking IE man hours .I have all those .tiffs from LRO that have been released. I'm there and I don't see 25 images sorry to tell you. I see 9 (not including the APOLLO landing sites).tiffs or strips of pictures. You mean to tell me as many times as its orbited the moon that's all there is? I seriously doubt that.

I know, I know. I'm already browsing the LROC's images. My point was different - I do hope a good image release policy will be set up in the near future and the team will continue publishing images in the future. As you remember - China and India stopped publishing new images after a month or two.

Several images per week is good. An image per day is great! Publishing one or two images per month or two months is not great.

I only fear the story with Chandrayaan-1 and Chang'e 1 will not be repeated.