MOON SITES
WHY IN NEWS ?
- Recently Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the naming of the sites of touchdown point of Chandrayaan 3.
SITES NAMES:
- Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the landing site of the lander Vikram would be known as Shiv Shakti Point.
- Additionally, it was also announced that the area where Chandayaan-2 met with an accident in 2019 will be named Tiranga Point.
MOON- AN INTERNATIONAL PROPERTY:
- In 1966, the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs came out with the Outer Space Treaty.
- Notably, this was during the Cold War era, when the two superpowers, the USSR and the United States, were locked in a rivalry.
- This manifested in an arms race (over military supremacy), economic competition and the Space race. Here, both were eager to accomplish firsts – the first man on the Moon, the first astronauts to be sent to Space, etc.
- Setting some common principles for space exploration, the Treaty said in its Article II: “Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.”
NAMING OF LANDING SITES ON MOON:
- The International Astronomical Union (IAU) determines some other rules for Space activities. India is among its 92 members.
- The IAU has been the arbiter of planetary and satellite nomenclature since its inception in 1919,
- An informal practice of naming landmarks was common during the Apollo missions. Names were given to the small craters and mountains near each landing site (e.g., Shorty, St. George, Stone Mountain) but official names were used as well.
INDIA NAMING OTHER SITES ON MOON:
- Following the 2008 mission Chandrayaan-1, a spot where the probe crashed (as it was meant to for the purposes of the mission), was named “Jawahar Sthal” after the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.
- There is also a Sarabhai crater, named after the first ISRO Chairman, Vikram Sarabhai. The late Astronaut Kalpana Chawla, the first Indian-born woman to go to Space, also has the Chawla crater named after her.
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