Wireless Sensor Networks – A potential tool to probe for water on Moon

A Wireless Sensor Network for in situ probing of lunar water/ice is proposed. The mission scenario in single and multi-tier architectures for probing water in a permanently shadowed region of the Moon and different scenarios of exploration are discussed. The ideas presented in the paper are a positive assertion of feasibility for the sensor node hardware, given current levels of technological advancements.     

Retrieval of aerosol size distribution from extinction measurements and verification with observations at a tropical station

Aerosol size distributions were retrieved by computing aerosol extinction parameters using extensive measurements of direct solar radiation made in the 0.4 and 0.6 μm wavelengths at Pune with Volz type sunphotometer during winter (November–February), pre-monsoon (March–May), monsoon (June–August) and post-monsoon (September–October) of 1980–1981. The computer aerosol size distributions are compared with the direct measurements made using Anderson eight-stage cascade impactor. There is agreement between the retrieved and measured size distributions. The retrieval method is simple and useful for intensive aerosol measurement programmes.     

Presolar grains in micro-inclusions of iron meteorites

In residues of several iron meteorites, obtained by dissolution of the metal in dilute H₂SO₄, the isotopic ratio of ¹⁹⁰Os/¹⁸⁴Os has been measured by radiochemical neutron activation analysis and is found to be anomalous in several cases. The largest deviation so far seen is a 40% enrichment of ¹⁸⁴Os in a mineral of Sikhote Alin. A lack of homogenization of the two isotopes that are produced in different nucleosynthetic processes suggests that iron meteorites are more primitive than any other matter available to us so far. Isotopic composition of Xe is found to be planetary in general. However the two light isotopes ¹²⁴Xe and ¹²⁶Xe are strongly depleted in some non-magnetic residues. Correlation diagrams of isotopic ratio pairs indicate that a two component mixture model is not adequate. EPR studies of the non-magnetic fractions of the residues show a large concentration of stabilized free radicals which could be ascribed to an irradiation of micro-inclusions prior to compaction into the metal matrix.     

Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) on-board Chandrayaan-2 rover

Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) payload configuration for Chandrayaan-2 rover has been completed recently and fabrication of mechanical assembly, PCB layout design and fabrication are in progress. Here we present the design and performance evaluation of various subsystems developed for APXS payload. The low energy threshold of <1 keV and the energy resolution of ∼150 eV at 5.9 keV, for the Silicon Drift Detector (SDD), as measured from the developed APXS electronics is comparable to the standard spectrometers available off-the-shelf. We have also carried out experiments for measuring fluorescent X-ray spectrum from various standard samples from the USGS catalog irradiated by the laboratory X-ray source ²⁴¹Am with 1 mCi activity. It is shown that intensities of various characteristic X-ray lines are well correlated with the respective elemental concentrations.