Tag: The Wire Science

  • Links to my recent Writing

    On the cusp of November, I began writing again. The last time I wrote before this was for the SSLV launch in August. I did not write on the Bullet Journal instance either.

    This blog post is to link to the various pieces of writing I have done at the cusp of November:

    The Wire Science – When an LVM3 flies, what does it mean for India?

    I wrote this piece for The Wire Science. It was published on October 30, 2022. In the article, I argue that while the LVM3 has proven reliability, it needs to sort out production issues and needs more support from the government.

    Short Story – Return to Earth

    I started writing this story in 2018 for National Novel Writing Month. It started as a pentalogy. I hoped to publish one novel as a part of each NaNoWriMo in the future. I then decided to cut it down to a trilogy. In 2021, I decided to cut it down further to a single novel. This story has haunted me and the only way I could think of something else for NaNoWriMo 2022 was to limit it to a short story.

    Short Story – My Life is a Diwali Gift

    I wrote this story in response to a prompt. I wrote a follow-up to this story that I will publish on November 10.

    Newsletter #42

    I sent out the 42nd edition of the newsletter on November 3.

  • Should India sign the Artemis Accords?

    I wrote a piece on The Wire Science with the above title. You can find the article here.

  • A muted first anniversary for Chandrayaan 2

    Arup Dasgupta writes in The Wire Science about the muted Chandrayaan 2 anniversary. This is quite contrary to the claim of the 95% mission success that ISRO spoke of at the time of the loss of lander and rover.

    I broadly agree with the point Dasgupta makes in the article but have a few reservations to share.

    I think there have been many more publications of results than what Dasgupta claims but they are not centralized at any one place. This has been a pain point with ISRO. I have to depend on r/ISRO for helping me find where ISRO has published this information.

    I summarized the findings from Chandrayaan 2 in Issue #3 of Pradeep’s Space Newsletter under the heading Chandrayaan 2 science papers where other than the Current Science articles Dasgupta mentions, there are papers submitted to the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC). There may be more or perhaps COVID-19 intervened.

    ISRO has announced that Chandrayaan 2 data will be released in public in October 2020. Hence the claim about there being no release of data may be premature. An announcement of opportunity may follow.

    Speculation about the lander-rover, is that more news will be available with images from Chandrayaan 2 when they publish a paper about it. But the silence and reaction from ISRO about the failure of the lander-rover part of the mission has been childish.

    Shanmuga Subramanian mentioned in the article above has also been continuing the search for Chandrayaan 2 lander-rover from data obtained from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter (LRO) from subsequent passes over the crash site. He has also been continuing to search for impact debris of the Moon Impact Probe launched with Chandrayaan 1 in 2008. Talking of Chandrayaan 1, I will be posting here about their finding of rust on the lunar surface.

    To end, I like to share VM’s post about why it’s a pain to try and follow what ISRO does. But, part of the love for our space agency is learning about ISRO using any means necessary.