They found an Indian on the moon

In case you haven’t heard, India’s probe Chandrayaan 1 landed on the lunar surface this morning. Most of my coworkers think that this is a statement for India as India is trying to prove itself as a global power. That’s funny because most Americans still think of India as a desert with people riding around on camels. Honestly this lunar probe wasn’t really a big surprise to me. There are so many Indian engineers at Johnson Space Center already; hell my NASA manager is Indian.

I remember when I was at A&M I saw students from India all over the engineering buildings. If you own a Dell computer and you have to call customer support, there is like a 99% chance that there will be an Indian on the other end trying to help you fix your computer. This is just another example of how the rest of the world is catching up or even passing the US as a powerhouse.

Anyways… I was curious what the hell this probe was going to do on the moon. I did a little bit of research and basically for the next two years, Chandrayaan 1 will map a three-dimensional atlas of the Moon and also check for the presence of water-ice with the help of instruments built by India and other countries including the US, Britain and Germany.

I can’t image China being very happy about India beating them to the moon, because I know China had their eyes set on the moon a long time ago. I’m curious to see how China will respond with a probe/rover of their own.

Hopefully as other nations such as China and India set their sights on the moon Americans will kick NASA’s ass into getting us back on the moon again.