the positive side of the world

The moon mineralogy mapper (M3), a scientific instrument of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) onboard India's first lunar mission Chandrayaan-1, found iron-bearing minerals on the lunar surface, the US space agency said on Thursday.

"The mapper spectrometer has beamed images of the Orientale Basin region of the moon, indicating abundance of iron-bearing minerals such as pyroxene. Using different wavelengths of light, the instrument has also revealed for the first time changes in rock and mineral composition," M3 principal investigator Carle Pieters said in a statement hosted on NASA Website.

Data from the 7-kg mapper provides space scientists first opportunity to examine lunar mineralogy at high spatial and spectral resolution.

The Orientale Basin is located on the moon's western limb. M3 captured the data last week when Chandrayaan was orbiting the moon at an altitude of 100 km.

"The imaging spectrometer provides us with compositional information across the moon that we have never had access to before. Our ability to identify and map the composition of the surface in geologic context provides a new level of detail needed to explore and understand the earth's nearest celestial neighbour," affirmed Pieters, who teaches at Brown University in Rhode Island.

The mapper was selected as a mission of opportunity through the NASA discovery programme. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory designed and built the instrument at Pasadena in California.

"M3 will also help in characterising and mapping lunar minerals for knowing the moon's early geological evolution. Its compositional maps will improve our understanding of the early evolution of a differentiated planetary body and provide a high-resolution assessment of lunar resources," Chandrayaan project director M. Annadurai averred.

M3 is one of the 10 instruments onboard the unmanned Chandrayaan, conducting experiments while the spacecraft orbits over the moon next two years.

Five instruments were indigenously built by the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), while the remaining six payloads are of foreign origin, including three from the European Space Agency, two from NASA and one from Bulgaria.

Chandrayaan was launched on October 22 onboard the 316-tonne polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV-C11) from ISRO's Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota spaceport, about 80 km north of Chennai.

After traversing 3,84,000 km through the deep space for 18 days, the spacecraft entered the lunar orbit on November 8 and its moon impact probe was lowered on the moon's surface on November 14.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

On June 1st, fourteenth Loksabha completes its four years and now we enter in election years. At a time when several political parties are gearing up for new alliances and several politicians are changing loyalties to get through the hurdles of General Elections scheduled next year, think what we are doing. Here we stands for every one who is citizen of India.

Have you ever thought how important your vote is even if you did not choose to cast it? Just look at a possible statistics of a certain constituency
Number of candidates: 5 or 8 or 11 or anything
Percentage of Voting: 45%
Candidate A : 32%
Candidate B : 26%
Candidate C : 19%
And so on
You will say what is new in it. It’s usual and candidate A will win as A has secured more votes. Yes its usual thing and it is the picture of almost every constituency. Now lets have another look on statistics
Percentage of votes secured by A is 32 but it is 32% of only those who went to vote. That means 32% of 45% of total voters. That is equal to 14.4%. Let’s have a look on votes of top three candidates again
Candidate A : 32% of 45% : 14.4%
Candidate B : 26% of 45% : 11.7%
Candidate C : 19% of 45% : 08.5%
Now this is real picture Candidate with 14% votes won election by some what good margin by defeating those who got 11.7% and 8.5% and so on. Now you may blame Indian voting system which gives chance for such faults. But is it not known to you? Don’t you know from the first day that these are rules of the game and you knew that a candidate F is or may be a good candidate but you never choose to let him get your support in form of votes. May be remaining 85.6% people knew that A is someone who is not to be trusted but most of them choose to stay away saying politics is dirty.
Yes politics is dirty. And it is dirty because we choose it to be dirty.
It’s dirty because we don’t have heart to take responsibility.
It’s dirty because we could not perform simplest task given to us and that to only for our well being.
Do you know where your votes go when you don’t cast? Let me tell you
With not casting votes you passively (Actually actively) support people, ideologies and works you don’t like.
Its coming soon, the voting day is not far, one more chance to perform simplest task assigned to us is just one year ahead. Are you prepared to perform your duty? Are you prepared to do something for what you have been blaming others for years?