October!!! seems to be a great month for space exploration. This month in 1957(October 4 1957), Russians launched Sputnik 1 - the first artificial satellite. “Sputnik” literally means “Satellite” in Russian. The day marked the beginning of space age for homosapiens.
Today (Oct 22 2008), India had sucessfully started its maiden voyage to moon. Its a moment of great pride. However, we need to remeber this mission is still in its first phase at the time of this post. Currently the satellite is in earth’s orbit and it will take 15 more days to reach lunar orbit. Apart from the high end scientific studies to be carried out by this satellite for two years in orbit, one another important part of this mission carrying symbolic significance is “Moon Impact Probe(MIP)” - a small satellite carried by “Chandrayaan” which is to impact on the moon. This “MIP” has a picture of tricolor(Indian Flag) on it which marks India as the fourth nation to place the flag on the moon after Russia, USA and Japan. Also this mission marks international presence as it carries six foreign payloads(US - 2, ESA - 3 and Bulgaria - 1) apart from five indian ones.
Its really inspiring to see asian nations making great progress in space exploration in this century. Japan started first asian lunar exploration mission by launching “SELENE” in 2007. Chinese followed suite with their “Chang’e”. Now its the turn of India. May be these countries are drawing inspiration from great feats acheived by western world during “Space Race Era’. Well, the Russian “Sputnik Shock / Surprise - by which mankind defied gravitation for the first time” and American answer “Apollo - which enabled Neil Armstrong to take a small step which in turn become a giant leap for mankind”, were inspiring to every one around the globe. So let these developing asian nations follow the steps of mighty western powers and explore space for the benefit of the mankind. Also they need to be careful not to end up in a “Star Wars” type stalemate which plagued last century. Let there be more cooperation between world nations than competition so that total mankind is benefitted. There are lot of talks cropping up about “Space Colonies” and stuff like that. This is good if “Colonies” are developed for total humanity. Let us not carry the divisions we developed in our “Mother Earth” to these distant celestial bodies. Let us remember though Americans conquered moon as early as 1969 they haven’t made any territorial claims on it. This should be a guiding spirit for all new age space explorers.
One childish wish… We, children in India grew up hearing stories from our “Grannies” about a “Grand Ma” feeding rice to her “Grand Child” in Moon(”Nila Choru” in Tamil). We wholeheartedly believed it until this story was busted by our school geography teacher who made us realise those dark marking on moon were just craters on lunar surface. May be these lunar missions can make it possible for this child hood story / belief to become a reality some day.
PS: Well, I was typing and deleting the previous paragraph on ”One childish wish”. I was ambivalent - “to type or not to type”. Suddenly the following quote by a great man(JFK I guess but i am not sure) flashed in my mind.
“PEOPLE SEE THINGS AROUND THEM AND EXPLAIN WHY. I DREAM ABOUT THINGS THAT DON’T EXIST AND ASK WHY NOT?”.
Which made me muster courage to type those lines. Please post your comments on this article.
