Category: Space

  • March 26, 2007

    It’s been a long time sine I’ve been thinking about joining HBCSE library to get more books to refer for the SEDSAT 2 Project. I haven’t gotten around to doing it yet.

    I am thinking about starting the next big start up. No, not on the Internet, though it can have a website. I am just not getting around to thinking about it since I am doing some crazy thinking for SEDSAT 2.

    I want to make my team enjoy the stuff that they’re doing. Make them innovate a few things that would help in mass budgeting. The thing looks so un-do-able (is there a word like that?) that my resolve for doing it is just sky-rocketing (what a word to use!)

    I am thinking several things together but doing nothing, or so I feel.

    I used Google Co-op search to build my “Outer Space Search” engine.

  • GIS in India

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://blogs.seds.org/pradeep. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on February 20, 2007 as per the timestamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    The NSDI has been trying for a long time to implement GIS in India with the aims of “to ensure that departments open their trove of information maps and data on forests, minerals, town planning, rainfall, archaeology for being placed on a proposed Geospatial Information System (GIS) backbone”.Yesterday, they must have had the happiest day of their life (I’m just thinking here) when they read this half-page report.

    The Indian Government has finally decided to release data stored in files, cans and what not to the modern GIS. This comes as a surprise even for the NSDI. GIS will also provide imagery.

    As the report goes on: “The NSDI web-user interface will provide open access of the information processed by the project. But further access to its metadata, data about data or a cataloguing system, will be secure. The metadata server will be the brain of the system and guide access and use of the NSDI agency server which contains the spatial data.”

    There are also talks of releasing .8 m resolution satellite images available thanks to CartoSat 2. Let’s see how thinks go. The Defence establishment has already given the green signal.

  • Mirror Blog

    This blog will have a mirror blog setup by me on Blogger: http://paraspaces.blogspot.com. This is where I used to blog about a year or so ago. I’ve cleaned that up to put more space blog posts. I was considering removing this blog, but later decided to just mirror this blog in that one.

  • A Few Links…

    It’s really very funny experience if you want to blog about space. You love the subject. You can talk for hours, given the chance, but to write a good blog post will take you days and days.

    Well, all said and done, I have nothing useful to add today. Here are some links –

    1. India’s Chandrayaan-I project scheduled for departure on 30 March, 2008. Chandrayaan-II coming up in 2010.
    2. The recent testing of SRE and the launch of 3 sats together on the PSLV-C7.
    3.India’s best offering in terms of images of the Earth from  space – CARTOSAT-2.

  • Yuri’s Night

    Well, some sort of order has been done. All the things that I wanted sorted are sort of, sorted.

    We’d like to hold an event called Yuri’s Night in India. Any ideas? Any thoughts?

    Yuri’s Night is an event held across the globe  to commemorate the first man in space – Yuri Gagarin. Any ideas, anyone ready to give us a place to do the event, that would be great.

  • Interesting Stuff from ISRO

    India has today announced the launching of its own navigation satellite system. The date for the launch of Chandrayaan-I has also been announced as 30 March, 2008. Mark the date in your calendars.

    There has also been talks of having a lunar lander by 2020. Interesting stuff coming from ISRO.

  • Korolev’s Centenary Celebrations

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://blogs.seds.org/pradeep. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on February 08, 2007 as per the timestamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    I attended the Korolev centenary celebrations yesterday. Started of like all Indian events do – with the lighting of the lamp. There was a photo exhibition that we walked through. Lot of cool pics – the early control rooms that the Soviet’s useds, their rockets, their launch pads and ofcourse, Korolev himself.

    A couple of lectures later, we had some Indian twist in the form of screening the SRE mission. I didn’t post about the SRE here.

    It happened on 22nd January, 2007. India tested its indigenously developed re-entry technology along with the launch of 4 satellites on board the PSLV-C7. SRE stands for Space Vehicle Re-entry Experiment. You’ll find a good deal more in the ISRO website.

    Well, the Korolev evening ended with Cocktails. Since, I don’t drink, I settled for a Coke. Well, had a good time.

  • Korolev’s Birth Centenary

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://blogs.seds.org/pradeep. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on February 05, 2007 as per the timestamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    It’s a time for personal upheveal. I am not able to write anything in my main blog. But, have lots of work related to space.

    Coming up later this week, I’ve been invited to attend the birth centenary of Sergei Korolev. He’s the man responsible for the first satellite and the first man in space – Yuri Gagarin for which you guys get to party on Yuri’s Night.

    Let’s see how things go from there on.

  • SEDS-Earth blogging

    EDS Earth, the international chapter of SEDS has decided to do a bit of an experiment. They’ve asked people from 5 chapters (initially) to write a blog post every week. We haven’t tried such a thing yet. Let’s see how it works. Want to know where the SEDS blog is? Here it is – http://blogs.seds.org/sedsearth.

  • Follow up to Kirk’s post and some ideas of my own

    Note: I wrote this on my earlier blog hosted as https://blogs.seds.org/pradeep. I recovered the text from the WayBack Machine. This post appeared on January 29, 2007 as per the timestamp. I’m trying to collect here again all my old writings spread on various blogs.

    Long time no post, so here’s one finally juiced between the time I went to the bathroom and ate my breakfast.

    Kirk has an interesting article and some comments on why NASA feel kids don’t like what it’s doing. Even after recently getting out of teenage just now, I still can’t explain what problems a teenager faces. Times change very quickly. Kids seem to be interested in MySpace and community stuff, something that almost all space agencies leave out.

    NASA and for that matter, every space agency leaves out the community aspect of space. People are interested to interact, exchange and learn. Today’s generation of kids live on blogs, MySpace and YouTube. Even I, 20 years old believe more what the blogs tell me than what the local newspaper does. Hell, half of my friends don’t even read newspapers and get their news from MySpace and Orkut.

    I know scientists at NASA may not have the time to blog etc. but wouldn’t they if their funding depended on it? You need kids and the younger generation to talk and have conversations about you? Use modern technology. Just like you would advertise on a magazine catering to venture capitalists for such funding, you put your content on sites like MySpace, YouTube and start blogging if you want the kids to talk about you. And while you’re at it, having real people helps and not some sort of abstract character like Uncle Space.

    That was just my two paise worth.