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Historic moment for the entire country, the PSLV-C11, carrying India’s first unmanned moon spacecraft Chandrayaan-1, was successfully put into initial orbit from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on Wednesday at around 6.40 am. Watch

At the end of the 49-hour countdown, the 44.4 meter tall four-stage PSLV-C11 blasted off from the second launch pad lifted off from the second launch pad into a cloudy sky. Chandrayaan-1 is carrying 11 payloads, five entirely designed and developed in India, three from European Space Agency, one from Bulgaria and two from US, which would explore the Moon over the next two years.

After a series of procedures over the next two weeks, the spacecraft would reach its desired Lunar orbit and placed at a height of 100 km from the Lunar surface, marking the operational phase of the mission which would put India in the elite lunar club.

Large crowds had gathered at Sriharikota since early Wednesday morning to witness this historic event. The crowds cheered at the PSLV, which soared majestically into the skies. However, the thick black clouds played spoil sport for those waiting to watch the PSLV launch into the skies. Watch

Also Read:
India’s First Mission to Moon - Chandrayaan

India in going to join the elite club of counties who have been able to send missions to moon, if everything goes as planned, any of the days starting October 19th to 28th would be remembered as the day when indian reach the nearest celestial body, the MOON. Chandrayaan-1 (means moon craft) is all set to make its first voyage to moon on these tentative dates depending on the weather condition.

Chandrayaan-1 was built by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) along with HAL and carries 11 payloads, five from India and six from International agencies, three from the European Space Agency (ESA) one from the Bulgarian Aerospace Agency (BSA), and two from NASA. Chandrayaan-1 is a 590-kg spacecraft and it will be launched by a India’s own Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-XL) from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota. The PSLV has been the most successful launch vehicle for ISRO till date. It holds the record for sending as many as 10 satellites simultaneously during its last mission. This time, it is all set to break its own record by carrying 11 different payloads. Due to the modifications, the PSLV C-11 will have a lift-off weight of 316 tonnes, higher than the “standard” 294-ton version. The payload capacity also has increased from 1600 kg to 1800 kg.

During the two year mission, Chandrayaan-1 will orbit the Lunar surface and sends digital elevation maps of the moon. It will also send information on the traces of the composition of the lunar surface apart from looking for atomic minerals such as thorium, uranium and radon. it will also look into the possibility of finding water on the moon.

ISRO points out that a lunar mission can provide impulse to science in India, a challenge to technology and possibly a new dimension to international cooperation. ISRO has announced that Chandrayaan-1 will be on display for the first time before Media.

Undoubtedly, for India which began its space journey in a modest way in 1963 with the launch of a 9-kilo rocket from a research facility at the fishing hamlet of Thumba in Kerala, the Chandrayaan-1 marks a quantum leap. Vikram Sarabhai and APJ Abdul Kalam laid this foundation of what has become one of the greatest success stories of India. We have seen numerous successes in the recent past with our space programs. On 28th April 2008, we created history by launching ten satellites in one go, carrying a payload of 824 kg. India’s first fully commercial launch came on 23rd April when the Italian astronomical satellite, AGILE, was sent into space. On January 10th 2007, India launched the PSLV C-7 vehicle, injecting four satellites into orbit. The moon mission would cost a whopping Rs 386 crores.

Also Read: Indian technology to increase missile range by 40%

Also Read:

• Big Bang experiment at CERN
• Large Hadron Collider Started
• Google logo - Big bang experiment

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After the successful nuke deal, indian scientist at IISc Bangalore developed breakthrough technology that will increase the range of missiles and satellite launch vehicles by at least 40%.

Agni III, India’s longest-range missile is capable of hitting targets 3,500 km away after applying this technology its range will increase upto 4,900 km. It became possible by adding a special-purpose coating of chromium metal to the blunt nose cone of launch vehicles and missiles.

Missiles fly at hypersonic velocities (five times the speed of sound) and encounter high atmospheric drag. Chromium coating on the nose of missile works by adding temporary heat and pushing the stagnating air away to create an easier path. Lab experiments shows that atmospheric drag is reduced by 47% and a “conservative estimate” was that this would result an increase of at least 40% of the range. Chromium coating evaporates once the missile has re-entered the atmosphere. It dosn’t require any additional energy to reduce atmospheric drag.

This technology help avert problems which happen in 2003 to the American space shuttle Columbia when it was re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The disaster was caused by damage to the shuttle’s thermal protection system, killing seven crew members, including indian origin Kalpana Chawla.

The big bang experiment (biggest experiment for human race) started at 9.30 am local time. Scientists have switched on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the device they hope will unravel some of the remaining mysteries of the universe.

The £5 billion machine has been described as a 17-mile racetrack around which two streams of protons - building blocks of matter - run in opposite directions before smashing into one another. Reaching 99.99 per cent of the speed of light, each beam will pack as much energy as a Eurostar train travelling at 90 mph.

The flashes from the collisions may help scientists reproduce the conditions that existed during the first moments after the Big Bang at the birth of the universe.

Some of the useful link about the experiment-

• Full coverage of the Large Hadron Collider atom smasher
• Watch: How the great machine will work
• Watch: Large Hadron Collider workers’ rap is YouTube hit

Physicists hope to learn more about the origins of mass, gravity, universe and mysterious dark matter.

German chemist Professor Otto Rossler claims that black holes created by the LHC will grow uncontrollably and “eat the planet from the inside”. These claims have been dismissed by leading scientists, including Prof Stephen Hawking who said that the LHC is “feeble compared with what goes on in the universe. If a disaster was going to happen, it would have happened already.”

After the switch-on first stream of subatomic particles (Hadrons) circulating in the tunnel. First collisions are expected in 30 days. The LHC will produce beams seven times more energetic than any previous machine, and around 30 times more when it reaches its design performance, by 2010.

Today at 12:30 pm (IST) scientists will launch an experiment that will recreate the birt of universe (The Big Bang). They are hoping to find evidence of extra dimensions, invisible ”dark matter,” and an elusive particle called the ”Higgs boson”.

They are planning to send a beam of particles racing around the 27-kilometer ring of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) for the first time. The LHC, is the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. Beams of subatomic protons and other particles will zip around the ring, accelerated up to nearly the speed of light by some 1,800 superconducting magnet systems. Protons will reach an energy level of 7 trillion electron volts, seven times more powerful than in any existing accelerator. There will be 600 million collisions every second and every collision will emit two-lakh small signals. They will study these signals, clean the data and analyse them. Photon Multiplicity Detector (PMD), which has been fitted in the LHC, in which small particles (protons) will be accelerated and made to collide at the highest-ever man-made speed. The project has cost an estimated $5.8 billion.

Some critics have wondered whether attempts to reproduce conditions at the beginning of the universe may create a black hole that could destroy the Earth. A CERN team that studied the matter concluded there was no danger of that happening. European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN) physicist John Ellis says simply, the skeptics are wrong. “LHC is only going to reproduce what nature does every second, it has been doing for billions of years, and all of these astronomical bodies including the earth and the sun, they are still here. So there really is no problem.”

There are 30-odd physicists from India, who are part of this experiment. The Photon Multiplicity Detector (PMD) will play a key role in this experiment. The PMD was developed at the Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre in Kolkata, which is a body of the Department of Atomic Energy, and the machines were transported to Geneva from February this year.

Watch the live webcast of the Big Bang Experiment

News on the experiment