The press in India is all gaga over the recently published finding by a joint team of NASA and ISRO about confirmed presence of OH and H2O molecules on moon surface. This is stark contrast to all the negative press that ISRO got after it declared that it has lost contact with Chandrayaan. It is press after all, when are they going to do some mature reporting?
Cutting sort, see (http://m3.jpl.nasa.gov/NEWS/ and http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1178658) for more technical information on this findings.
Apart from the scientific (and possibly in longer terms practical) significance of this finding, the Chandrayaan-I mission has opened up a whole new shift in space explorations: of global collaboration. Yes, Chandrayaan-I has some amount of “pride” attached to it, but it was essentially a first space exploration program that involved as many as 20 countries. For this very reason it was chosen for AIAA Space 2009 award (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-1#Award_for_Chandrayaan-1).
One needs to note that, space exploration in future should not be a just done for “pride” or for a mere “me too”. Space explorations are going to be expensive, of what benefits it brings to the human kind should be the prime objective of each mission. For me, Chandrayaan-I has given a glimpse of what can be achieved by collaboration and not merely showing off some false pride.
I wonder to what extent such collaborations can bring in more knowledge to the human kind. All of us just need to loose a little bit of pride. How much are we ready for this?
(After I posted this, I came across an article [letter] in the Hindu, which has similar things to say, albeit in more beautiful words :) To read head here: http://www.thehindu.com/2009/09/27/stories/2009092755981100.htm).
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