'Red' letter day: India's Mars mission crosses halfway mark

Bangalore: Mangalyaan, India's maiden mission to Mars, crossed the halfway mark of its incredible journey today morning at 9.50 am.

Mangalyaan (Mars craft), which was launched on November 5, 2013 from the Sriharikota spaceport in Andhra Pradesh, has travelled nearly 337.5 million km till now.

It is expected to rendezvous with the Red Planet on September 24, 2014, when it will become the farthest any Indian object has ever travelled.

At Rs. 450 crore, India's Mars mission is the cheapest inter planetary mission ever undertaken.

Mangalyaan aims to look for signs of life on Mars. It also aspires to fulfill India's covert desire to beat China in the race to the Red Planet.

The mission seems to be on track thanks to the nature of planetary forces and the precise orbit injection by the Indian Space Research Organisation.

A team comprising nearly 500 ISRO scientists had worked tirelessly to ensure that Mangalyaan was ready for its launch within a record 15 months.

Of the 51 missions to Mars launched from across the world till date, 27 have failed so far.

If Mangalyaan manages to reach Mars, India will become the first country to achieve the enviable feat on a spacecraft 's maiden flight.

Till date, only the United States, Russia and the European Space Agency have successfully managed to send a spacecraft all the way to Mars.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had announced the Centre's decision to undertake a mission to Mars during his speech at the Red Fort on August 15, 2012.

From simply being an ambitious idea by the Indian government to an actual inter planetary mission that has crossed its halfway mark, it has been quite a remarkable journey for Mangalyaan.

World's first 3D fingerprint developed by Indian-American scientist

A team of Michigan State University computer scientists led by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur alum Anil Jain have built the first three-dimensional model of a human fingerprint.

What Jain, a University Distinguished Professor of computer science and engineering, and his team did was develop a method that takes a two-dimensional image of a fingerprint and maps it to a 3-D finger surface.

The 3-D finger surface, complete with all the ridges and valleys that make up the human fingerprint, is made using a 3-D printer. It creates what Jain's team called a fingerprint "phantom."

"In health care, a 3-D heart or kidney can be created," Jain said. "Because the dimensions are known, they can be put into a scanner and the imaging system can be calibrated."

While the 3-D model doesn't yet have the exact texture or feel of a real finger, it could advance fingerprint sensing and matching technology.

"Tools like this would help improve the overall accuracy of fingerprint-matching systems, which eventually leads to better security in applications ranging from law enforcement to mobile phone unlock," Jain said.

Members of Jain's team include Sunpreet Arora, a computer science doctoral student, Kai Cao, a research associate in computer science and engineering and research collaborator Nick Paulter at the National Institute of Standards and Technology

Jain, who has a B.Tech degree from IIT Kanpur and MS and PhD degrees from Ohio State University, has six US patents on fingerprint matching and has written a number of books on biometrics and fingerprint/facial recognition.

Additionally, Jain has also received a number of prestigious awards for contributions to pattern recognition and biometrics.

SOURCE