Sunita Williams vs Kalpana Chawla

Who is the best?

We dont want to find out here.

I am a fan of both of them(slightly more on Kalpana's side).

These two women, who have promoted the Indian Space programme to such an extent, that we are even comparable to the Chinese in the Space supremacy.

Sunita Williams, the one in focus in the indian newspapers of late, has been a tremendously talented girl since her childhood and with an insight to deliver to the extreme.But unlike Kalpana, she was born and grown up in the US(that makes her an US citizen).Although she is no way related to India, she has her ancestral roots here.She has also served the US military with outstanding records.

On the other hand, Kalpana Chawla, was born and grown up in India, in Punjab.She was extremely talented and shy.She used to be very attracted to flying and hence choosing her career as an aeronautical engineer wasn't a difficult job.She left India for the US and studied in California and secured her family life there. She began working with NASA and went for low altitude flights.But her luck didnt go her way when she died in the columbia mission on 01/02/03.

For more info on both, log on to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunita_Williams

and                                              http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalpana_Chawla

Hubble Spots Pluto's Tiniest Moon

US astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a fifth and tiniest moon yet orbiting the icy planet Pluto.

The mini-moon is estimated to be irregular in shape and between 10 km and 25 km across. It is visible as a speck of light in Hubble images, Nasa said.

It provisionally named S/2012 (134340) 1 untill it gets a proper name, could help reveal more on how the Pluto system came into existence.

The team is intrigued that such a small planet can have such a complex collection of satellites. According to theory, all of Pluto's moons are relics of a collision between the planet and another large icy object billions of years ago.

"The moons form a series of neatly nested orbits, a bit like Russian dolls," said Mark Showalter from the Seti Institute in Mountain View, the leader of the team that discovered the new moon.

Pluto's largest moon, Charon, which is about 1,000 kilometres across, was discovered in 1978. Hubble observations in 2006 uncovered two additional small moons, Nix and Hydra.

"The inventory of the Pluto system we're taking now with Hubble will help the New Horizons team design a safer trajectory for the spacecraft," added Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, the mission's principal investigator.

Last year Hubble had discovered another moon revolving around Pluto. A NASA spacecraft named New Horizons is currently en-route to Pluto and will arrive there in 2015.

New Horizons will return the first ever detailed images of the Pluto system, which is so small and distant that even Hubble can barely see the largest features on its surface.

Pluto was discovered by American Scientist Clyde Tombaugh in 1930. It was regarded as the ninth full-fledged planet in the Solar System but astronomers have since demoted it to a dwarf planet in 2006.

Pluto was declassified as a planet due to a recognition that it is one of several large, icy objects that reside in the Kuiper Belt, a region just beyond the orbit of Neptune.


Source: Google News