Some good ol’ fashioned science news for you this dreary morning. Congrats are due to India, which launched its first moon mission a few hours ago. It’s an unmanned flight, so don’t expect to see video of Indian astronauts playing golf or cricket up there or anything. There will, however, be an Indian flag placed up there by the unmanned rover-dealie.
The Chandrayaan-1 (literally, lunar-craft 1), which launched from the country’s southeast, will be tooling about for two years, primarily modeling the surface of the moon. Maybe India can sell the data to Google, giving us Google Moon?
There’s speculation as to why India even bothered with the launch. One thing I’ve read on numerous sites is that, finally, India wants to flex some muscle, both of the scientific variety and of the regular “we’re an important country, respect us” sense.
It’s a neat video, if nothing else. Now we wait for Pakistan to freak out.