Eco Gadget for Earth Day

With Earth Day approaching, many green travelers are thinking more about responsible, sustainable consumption.

For sustainable travel products, Etón Corporation offers independent, self-powered radios with solar powered design and hand-crank technologies, requiring no plugs or batteries.


Etón Corporation’s sustainable products offer AM/FM radio reception, rechargeable Ni-MH battery pack, flashlight, siren, LED safety lights and a cell phone charger.

The company’s all-band radio, the Solarlink FR600, can be powered via solar power and includes the Specific Area Message Encoding (S.A.M.E.) feature.

S.A.M.E. , a system of six digit codes that are programmed into the radio, bring only the emergency data for your specific area, such as your county, during an alert broadcast.

The Solarlink FR500 and Solarlink FR360 can be powered by the sun and also charge MP3 players. While the smallest in the Etón lineup is the FR160 Microlink (above) which allows the user to tune into NOAA, FCC and EAS public alert systems.

RAINFALL PATTERN HAS CHANGED-SAYS ENVIRONMENTALISTS

After the recent downpour of rainfall in tamilnadu and its cities,Scientist and environmentalist insist that rains have become erratic and scarce in chennai.They say the rainfall that we get is a pale shadow of rains we were getting some 3 decades back.A study carried out in the city under the guidance of weather scientists had come to the conclusion that the entire water scarcity in the city could be addressed by rain water harvesting.Dr G.V Rama,atmospheric scientist(ISRO), said that the rain pattern has undergone drastic changes in the last two decades."previously it used to rain for 45 days during the october-december period.But now it hardly rains for 25 days.

CHANDRAYAAN'S PAYLOADS BEAMING DATA TO EARTH-"MISSION TO MOON"

Nine payloads aboard chandrayaan-1 have been switched onand the ISRO scientists are holding back the two remaining payloads because is is summer on moon and the lunar temperature is high.All these payloads have started beaming signals back to earth and were functioning normally,only two more equipments remain.We hope to switch them on by the second week of december said Dr M Annadurai,project director of chandraayan-1.The two payloads are High Energy X-Ray Spectrometer(HEX) and Sub KeV Atom Reflecting Analyser(SARA). Both these payloads are high voltage instuements.All the payloads were being switched on as per the schedule prepared by ISRO,they switched on Moon Minerology Monitor(MMM),Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar and Near InfraRed Spectrometer(SIR-2).Based on MMM's data special team formed is going to prepare a detailed global assessment of the moon's geology,said Dr.Annadurai.


Scientific Payloads

Chandrayaan-1 is an Indian Mission to the Moon. The indigenously developed payload experiments are:

TMC
Terrain Mapping stereo Camera (TMC) in the panchromatic band, having 5 m spatial resolution and 20 km swath.


HySI
Hyper Spectral Imaging camera (HySI) operating in 400-950 nm bands with a spectral resolution better than 15 nm and spatial resolution of 80 m with a swath of 20 km.


LLRI
Lunar Laser Ranging Instrument (LLRI) with height resolution of less than 5 m.


HEX
High Energy X-ray spectrometer (HEX) using Cadmium-Zinc-Telluride (CdZnTe) detector in the 30-270 keV energy region with spatial resolution of 33 km.


MIP
Moon Impact Probe (MIP) as piggyback on the main orbiter of the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, which will impact on the surface of the moon.


C1XS
Chandrayaan-1 X-ray Spectrometer (C1XS) through ESA - a collaboration between Rutherford Appleton Laboratory,UK and ISRO Satellite Centre, ISRO. Part of this payload is redesigned by ISRO to suit Chandrayaan-1 scientific objectives.


SIR-2
Near Infra Red spectrometer (SIR-2) from Max Plank Institute for Solar System Science, through Max-Planck Society, Germany and ESA.


SARA
Sub keV Atom Reflecting Analyser (SARA) through ESA, from Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Sweden and Space Physics Laboratory, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, ISRO. The digital processing unit of this payload/ experiment is designed and developed by ISRO, while Swedish Institute of Space Physics develops the payload.


RADOM
Radiation Dose Monitor Experiment (RADOM) from Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.



Mini-SAR
Miniature Synthetic Aperture Radar (Mini-SAR) from Applied Physics Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University and Naval Air Warfare Centre, USA through NASA.

M3
Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) from Brown University and Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA through NASA.