On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 1:29 AM, Anand Balachandran Pillai <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Sat, Nov 15, 2008 at 4:59 AM, Deepak Thukral <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> A job well done! >>> (It is unknown whether Python was running onboard ;-) >> >> ISRO is in stone age as far as Computer Technology is concern (Their portal >> only works in IE6 and written in creepy html). I think they are toiling with >> C, Fortran & JAVA. Probably they should inherit Python/Erlang from NASA/ESA. >> Hoping their new GIS Keyhole like webapp will use Python. >> > > Don't confuse the lack of sophistication of their website with any lack of > sophistication in engineering. Space & rocket science/engineering is a much > more > complex and delicate affair than typical software engineering. ISRO develops > and uses complex software for mission control which is not exactly > akin to developing a website - it is much more difficult to get right. > > Even if your website crashes, perhaps you might loose data or a few visitors > and lose some uptime. However, this is not the case with the software used > in space science. Everything has to work and work perfectly. Remember that > simple software glitches have often caused entire rocket missions to be > aborted. > This has happened even for mighty NASA. The most recent one I can think of > is the glitch with VxWorks that happened in one of their Mars rovers > which caused > the system software to reboot itself many times. > > In fact ISRO has done a splendid job managing to put a satellite to Moon > orbit and also perform a moon impact all in the very first attempt. Recall > that > Russia and U.S.A have had several crash lands and aborted attempts in their > moon missions. The quality control at ISRO has to be pretty damn good. > > I read a few articles about the images from Chandrayaan and it seems the > camera they have is top-class. The images it has send are already pretty good, > and it is perhaps the first moon satellite to carry a 3D (Terrain > mapping) camera. > I don't think any single moon (or perhaps earth) satellite is a classic > example > of international co-operation. Chandrayaan carries 11 payloads. > > To me, it looks like India is leading the way in international space > co-operation. > ISRO needs a big pat on the back for what they have done.
Thanks Anand for a very nice summary of the project's accomplishments. I have been reading stories about Chandrayaan online, but yours has captured the essential accomplishments. +PG _______________________________________________ BangPypers mailing list BangPypers@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/bangpypers
