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When Indian space agency scientists set out to design the Chandrayaan-3 moon mission, they knew they had one more chance to make history with a landing on the lunar south pole after a failed attempt four years ago.

They also had to do it on a shoestring budget and ended up spending only Rs. 6.15 billion on the mission.

From managing costs on rockets to developing a built-in-India supply base, the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) success with the Chandrayaan-3 moon landing shows how it has honed a system of doing more for less, officials, suppliers and analysts say.

ISRO’s record for frugal innovation will be tested by upcoming missions, including a project to study the sun set to launch next month and a plan to put astronauts in orbit.

Although India’s government allocated the equivalent of $1.66 billion (nearly Rs. 13,700 crore) for the department of space for the fiscal year ending in March, it spent around 25 percent less. The budget for the current fiscal year is $1.52 billion (nearly Rs. 12,560 crore).

By contrast, NASA has a $25 billion (nearly Rs. 2,06,585 crore) budget for the current year. Put another way, the annual increase in NASA’s budget — $1.3 billion (nearly Rs. 10,750 crore) — was more than what ISRO spent in total.

“No one in the world can do it like we do,” said S Somanath, ISRO chairman and a veteran aerospace engineer, who was celebrating Chandrayaan’s successful touchdown on Wednesday.

“I won’t disclose all secrets, otherwise everyone else (can) become cost effective,” he said at a news conference.

One example of how ISRO contained costs on Chandrayaan-3: it opted to take a longer route to the moon, allowing it to use less powerful – and cheaper – propulsion systems. Chandrayaan-3 took more than 40 days to reach the moon, looping through widening orbits to use the Earth’s gravitational force as a slingshot.

By contrast, Russia’s Luna-25 mission, which crashed before its own attempted landing on the moon’s south pole, had been on a more direct course to the moon. Russia has not disclosed what it spent on the failed mission.

“To take a direct route takes more power, more fuel, and is far more expensive,” said Somak Raychaudhury, an astrophysicist and vice chancellor of Ashoka University. 

ISRO also developed some of the lander components itself, including the cameras, altimeter and hazard avoidance sensors. It used Indian suppliers for vehicle assembly, transportation and electronics to keep costs low. And it limited the number of design prototypes to save time and money.

“With local sourcing of equipment and design elements, we are able reduce the price considerably. A similar set up by an international vendor would cost four to five times,” Amit Sharma, CEO of Tata Consulting Engineers, which was a vendor to ISRO for the Chandrayaan-3 project, told Reuters.

Stretching every rupee

Many of the ISRO scientists who worked on the failed Chandrayaan-2 attempt to land on the lunar south pole in 2019 stayed on for the current mission. 

ISRO is gearing up to launch the Aditya-L1 spacecraft, a space-based solar observatory, in September. It has plans to send astronauts to space in a mission ISRO’s Somanath has said could come by 2025. 

ISRO’s success is also expected to provide a lift for the country’s private-sector space start-ups at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is looking to open the sector to foreign investment, suppliers say.

Ankit Patel, founder and director of Ankit Fasteners, which has been supplying nuts, bolts and other fasteners to ISRO since 1994, said there were times when parts had to be hand carried to a launchpad to meet a deadline.

“The unsung heroes of ISRO are the engineers who are pushing their suppliers every day to achieve the set timeline,” Patel told Reuters.

He added: “ISRO has been very frugal with its expenditure. ISRO needs to think out of the box to stretch every rupee.” 

© Thomson Reuters 2023

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New World Record Alert: Weather Satellite Records Longest Lightning Flash of 515 Miles

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August 1, 2025

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New World Record Alert: Weather Satellite Records Longest Lightning Flash of 515 Miles

Back in the year 2017, when a thunderstorm exhibited a lightning bolt, it was astonishing in many ways. Not only was it surprising, but it was a bolt that went 515 miles (829 Kilometers) long. In recent scientific advancements, researchers have confirmed the length of the bolt using archival satellite data. The lightning stretched and travelled from Texas to Missouri. This lightning has finally made a world record by beating the previous record holder, which was a bolt that went 477 miles in the year 2020.

According to Randy Cerveny, an Arizona State University professor, who played a significant role in the study, stated, “We call it megaflash lightning and we’re just figuring out the mechanics of how and why it occurs”.

More About Megaflash Lightning

Megaflash lightning could be best described as a lightning bolt that possesses the capacity to reach 62 miles in length. Whereas, the average lightning bolt is less than 10 miles in length. In order to find the reason behind this megaflash, the team assessed the data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s GOES-16 satellite. This satellite is embedded with a lightning mapper that monitors over one million bolts on a daily basis. This analysis determined that the length of the bolt was 515 miles.

Know How a Megaflash is Measured

With the advancements in satellites, the lightning mappers have become an accurate source of measuring lightning. Previously, ground-based radio networks did the work. As mentioned on Space.com, according to Michael Peterson, Georgia Tech Research Institute, “Adding continuous measurements from geostationary orbit was a major advance”. We are now at a point where most of the global megalfash hotspots are covered by a geostationary satellite, and data processing techniques have improved to properly represent flashes in the vast quantity of observational data at all scales”.

Typically, these megaflashes are rare and are generated from less than one percent of the thunderstorms. These megaflashes are mainly a result of a 14-hour churn or more.

To conclude, as mentioned on Space.com, Cerveny stated, “Those conditions aren’t much rare though. And, as our lightning mapping satellites curate new data, the potential megaflashes are expected to be visible. Likewise, there is a possibility that megaflashes, even larger in length, exist. Over time, they will also be observed.

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New Rogue Planet Discovered in Hubble Data Using Einstein’s Gravity Theory

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August 1, 2025

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New Rogue Planet Discovered in Hubble Data Using Einstein’s Gravity Theory

Astronomers found that a new rogue planet hides in the archival data that was gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope with the help of Albert Einstein and the happening of the events by chance, leading to success. These planets are also known as free-floating planets and do not orbit a star. These are just ejected from their home systems because of the planetary interactions. As they lack a host star, it is difficult to detect them by transit. However, the astronomers use microlensing with gravity, Einstein’s 1915 theory-based phenomenon of general relativity, in which massive objects warp space and bend light from the background stars.

Einstein’s Theory Helps Detect Hidden Rogue Planet

According to As per Przemek Mroz, a professor at the University of Warsaw free free-floating planets don’t orbit any star and drift alone through the galaxy. In order to find such objects, we need to use the technique of gravitational microlensing. At the time of using this technique, the light of the background star gets magnified temporarily. The physicists estimate the mass of the object by analysing the properties of the event.

The newly found event of microlensing, OGLE-2023-BLG-0524, was seen by Hubble on May 22, 2023. Observed by KMTnet, the event only lasted for eight hours and was discovered in the Galactic bulge by the OGLE survey. The team ruled out the presence of a host star; however, very nearby elements can’t be excluded completely.

Microlensing Event Reveals Free-Floating Planet in Hubble Data

The lens and source are more relative to each other; the physicists confirm the status of the object over time. The movement of 5 milliseconds per year could take 10 years to resolve with the recent instruments.

Hubble’s data from 1997 let the scientists rule out the bright host stars. Mroz said that if the lens were a bright star, we would have observed it, but we could not. This absence evoked 25%-48% of the possible stellar companions. This research is available on arXiv.

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Brightest Gamma-Ray Burst Ever Observed Reveals Cosmic Secrets

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August 1, 2025

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Brightest Gamma-Ray Burst Ever Observed Reveals Cosmic Secrets

On Oct. 9, 2022, astronomers recorded an extraordinary flash of high-energy light. This gamma-ray burst (GRB 221009A), nicknamed the “BOAT” (Brightest Of All Time), was the brightest and most energetic cosmic explosion ever witnessed. It came from a galaxy about 2 billion light-years away, and its blast of gamma rays briefly overwhelmed detectors on orbiting satellites. Scientists say such a powerful GRB is extremely rare – roughly a once-in-10,000-year event – and its record-setting nature offers a rare chance to study the death of a star and the physics of these extreme blasts.

Decoding the ‘BOAT’

According to the paper, GRB 221009A was first detected by NASA’s Fermi and Swift spacecraft. Its initial, powerful gamma-ray flash blinded detectors around the world. Its extreme nature marked it out immediately from other GRBs. Though astronomers originally detected the BOAT as an immensely bright flash of high-energy gamma rays, this flash was followed by a fading afterglow across many wavelengths of light, thus allowing non-gamma-ray-based telescopes to study it.

One of the biggest challenges was that the related supernova, SN 2022xiw, was hidden by the brilliance of the GRB and only visible much later. This behaviour highlights how the burst’s huge energy can disguise temporarily the underlying death of the star, making total observation challenging.

Insights on GRBs

Gamma-ray bursts such as this result from the collapse of a star’s core into a black hole. The newly born black hole powers twin beams of particles at nearly the speed of light, breaking through the star and creating the seen gamma rays. GRB 221009A data fit this model but surprise us. Astronomers employed the James Webb Space Telescope to locate the supernova burst but could not detect a hint of heavy elements such as gold or platinum in the debris. Meanwhile, NASA’s Fermi satellite observed an odd gamma-ray line, which is potentially the first unmistakable detection of electrons colliding with positrons (their antimatter counterparts) and annihilating in a GRB jet. These clues are helping researchers refine models of GRBs, stellar collapse, and how heavy elements are forged.

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Further reading:
Gamma-Ray Burst, GRB 221009A, BOAT, Supernova, JWST, Fermi, Stellar Death, Cosmic Explosion, Astrophysics, Space Discovery, NASA

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