The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is planning 2nd moon mission Chandrayaan-2 by 2013. Russia's Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos) is joining hands with ISRO for development of Chandrayaan-2 Lander.This is going to be a very great mission and a tougher one than Chandrayaan-1.
Chandrayaan-2 will consist of a spacecraft and a landing platform with the moon rover.
The rover would move on wheels on the lunar surface, pick up samples of soil or rocks, do a chemical analysis and send the data to the spacecraft orbiting above.
The rover will have an operating life-span of a month. It will run on solar power.The data will be further sent to Earth through the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter.
The Indian Government has also approved this mission in a meeting of the Union Cabinet held on 18 September 2008.
The team of Chandrayaan-2 is headed by Dr.Mylswamy Annadurai.

Researches on Sun

Different views of Sun:

How do we live? Well by taking food.....From where does the food get produced ...Well, it's the Sun.
Being mythological, the sun was worshiped as a deity by ancient cultures and its power is now considered as a source of renewable energy.It was considered as a giant power and it was considered as one of the prominent and famous god after Jupiter and Mars.Astronomy is somewhere interlinked to mythology.

Looking in science point of view, all the life on Earth owes its existence to the sun. The sun emits strong rays during the daytime from where we human beings derive vitamin D and where most plants get their energy to process photosynthesis.

Astronomical terms of Sun:

The sun is also a star at the center of our solar system, as theories suggest. Its mass makes up more than 99 percent of the mass of our solar system and is 109 times the size of the only inhabitant planet(Earth).It has large number of varied gases inside it which are responsible for the heat and the mass. More than one million Earths could comfortably fit inside the sun.

With all that we now know about this bright star, there are still many areas of the sun that stand as mystery to us.

Researches have revealed that it is New Mexico's climate that is very suitable for the observations pertaining to solar and lunar radiations.The clear blue sky of New Mexico facilitate scientists around the globe to employ local researchers in finding out everything they can about the sun - from the inside out(sounds interesting....!!!)

Research on Sun:

NASA is going to launch a lengthy 15-year mission(too long) to study the sun continuously through satellites and telescopes(Thanks to Galileo).New Mexico State University abbreviated as NMSU has a role to play in understanding the images and data collected from the Telescopes.Grants and huge deal of money have been granted to the astronomers at NMSU from NASA and the National Science Foundation to help estimate weather.
A second major new solar project that New Mexico may well play a role in is called the Stellar Oscillation Network Group,led by a group of Danish institutions. It aims to build eight telescopes around the world so that stars can be viewed continuously. Well amazingly, this is going to be a very new visionary project which might aim in the discoveries of very new concepts that have been unknown so far(A great Thanks to the insight of these people).

It is not only NMSU that is taking the lead and major role in this project.NMSU is getting into collaboration with other institutions and has applied for funding from NSF's Major Research Instrumentation Program to place one of these new telescopes at the Apache Point Observatory(APO).
At NMSU, which is made up of members from the astronomy,mechanical, computer science, aerospace engineering, electrical and computer engineering and physics departments work to promote space and stellar based theories and research at the university.

We just have to watch what developments really take place and what effect these changes will have on our lifestyle.

Multiple ripples in Earth's Magnetic Field......

The Earth's magnetic field protects our planet from most of the permanent flow of particles from the solar wind. Fissures in this magnetic shield are known to occur, enabling the solar wind to penetrate our near-space environment. A study based on data collected by the four ESA Cluster satellites and the CNSA/ESA Double Star TC-1 spacecraft, provides new insight into the location and duration of these ruptures in the Earth's magnetic shield.
This study reports the observation of fissures on the Sun-facing side of the Earth's magnetic shield - the day side magneto pause. Fortunately, these fissures don't expose Earth's surface to the solar wind; our atmosphere protects us, even when our magnetic field doesn't. However, clear effects have been detected high in the upper atmosphere and in the region of space around Earth where satellites orbit.

The dominant physical process causing these cracks is known as magnetic reconnection, a process whereby magnetic field lines from different magnetic domains collide and reconnect: opening the closed magnetic shield. Magnetic reconnection is a physical process at work throughout the Universe, from star formation to solar explosions to experimental fusion reactors on Earth. However, the conditions under which it occurs and how long it lasts remain unclear.

What is known is that magnetic reconnection leads to the mixing of previously separated plasmas when, for instance, the solar wind plasma enters the magnetosphere (see Animation 1). In this instance the two magnetic domains are the Earth's internal magnetic field, and the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF). (The solar wind is not only composed of solar particles (mostly protons and electrons), it also carries the Sun's magnetic field. Out among the planets, this field is the IMF.)

For more than 700,000 years, the South to North orientation of the terrestrial magnetic field has been rather steady. In contrast, the IMF orientation is highly variable, with total inversion frequently observed on times-scales of minutes.

Reconnection between the IMF and the Earth's magnetic field critically depends on the angle between these fields. Space physicists have made a distinction between reconnection when both fields are in opposite directions, or anti-parallel, and component reconnection, when the IMF is neither parallel nor anti-parallel to the terrestrial magnetic field.

The distinction is important since component and anti-parallel reconnection have different onset characteristics and lead to different duration of the fissures in the magnetic shield. The distinction between these two types of magnetic reconnection has been the subject of hot debate among space scientists for many years.

For the first time, four spacecraft flying in constellation (the ESA Cluster mission), have provided unambiguous evidence of anti-parallel reconnection at high latitude on the day side magneto pause, occurring quasi-simultaneously with a period of low-latitude component reconnection detected by the Sino-European Double Star TC-1 satellite.

TC-1 and the Cluster array (with the Cluster spacecraft separated by ~2000 km) are more than 30,000 km apart (Figure 1). The 3D reconnection picture, determined by repeated sampling of the ion diffusion region and associated magnetic null fields (i.e. the heart of the reconnection process)

"This remarkable set of observations shows that magnetic reconnection at the magnetopause is not as simple as it is described in textbooks! It also demonstrates the need for the capability to study magnetic reconnection at multiple scales simultaneously", says Matt Taylor, acting Cluster project scientist at the European Space Agency.