Word: lunar
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...found water," said Anthony Colaprete, the principal investigator for NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), a mission that culminated in a spectacular crash on the surface of the moon about a month ago. (See a guide to the 40th anniversary of the moon landing...
...atmosphere. The new research, which used the intensity of the colors that bounce off the surface of the moon when it's hit by sunlight, proves that there are traces of both water and a closely related molecule called hydroxyl. Scientists now believe water could be produced in the lunar soil when hydrogen from solar winds combines with oxygen-rich substances on the lunar surface. Another theory centers on water-laden comets and meteorites hitting the moon...
...1960s, the Bangalore-based organization's very existence was questioned by critics - both inside and outside India - who said a poor country should worry about feeding hungry millions before firing rockets into space. Last month, there were allegations of incompetence after India's first-ever lunar probe, Chandrayaan-I, was lost when its communications system shut down. So this week's announcement that the same probe, fitted with a NASA research instrument, had found water on the surface of the moon (and managed to send the data back to earth before losing contact) was a welcome reason to cheer...
Even getting this far has been an achievement itself. A lunar mission has been consistently opposed by sections of India's political and scientific community ever since it was proposed in 1999. Critics question the logic of a country battling dire poverty spending millions of dollars on scientific pursuits that they liken to reinventing the wheel. They said the ISRO should stick to socially relevant research as it did after its establishment in 1969: launching satellites for landscape and resource mapping, weather forecasting, or communications and educational broadcasts...
...government agreed to an ambitious moon program. Then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who approved Chandrayaan-I at the Independence Day function on August 15, 2003, said he wanted India's space program to become one of the best in the world. Supporters of the program argued that a lunar mission would provide untold technological spin-offs. Many of those same enthusiasts now say they have been vindicated. Operating a satellite at a distance ten times beyond anything they had done before has given the ISRO valuable experience in hi-tech spacecraft, rocketry and advanced remote navigation technology...