India Aims for Mars Voyage in 2013

India is aiming to send an unmanned spacecraft to Mars in 2013, officials for the country's space agency said this week.
The Indian probe won't be landing on Mars like NASA's Curiosity rover, which is scheduled to touch down in the Martian desert on Monday, but will study the planet's climate and geology from orbit, according to AFP.
India is also hoping to launch its first manned space mission in 2016, the news service reported.
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) expects the Mars mission to cost between $70 - $90 million, AFP quoted an unnamed source at the space agency as saying. The Indian government has already allocated about $22.4 million to the project.
"We will embark on the Mars mission after the Department of Science gives the green signal and decides the schedule early next year," ISRO director Deviprasad Karnik told AFP.
If all goes according to plan, the Mars probe will lift off from the agency's launch site at Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, riding atop one of India's 320-tonne Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle boosters.
India's space program, dating back to 1963, is one of the world's oldest, but the country's list of accomplishments, mainly satellite insertion, is short compared to other national programs like NASA and Russia's Roscosmos Federal Space Agency. The India Chandrayaan-1 lunar satellite's discovery of water on the moon in 2009 marked a new high point for the ISRO and "boost[ed] the country's credibility among established space-faring nations," AFP noted.
Meanwhile, NASA's Mars Space Laboratory (MSL) and the Curiosity rover are making their final approach to the Red Planet more than nine months after launching successfully from Cape Canaveral. PCMag's Meredith Popolo is reporting from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., setting the stage for the "seven minutes of terror" observers are anticipating for the final descent to the Martian surface.

Smartphone patent case: Judge scolds Samsung, lets trial proceed

The judge in a massive smartphone patent case reprimanded Samsung for releasing excluded evidence on Friday but rejected a bid by Apple to order a verdict in the case.

Judge Lucy Koh expressed irritation with Samsung's releasing to the media of documents she had ruled were not to be viewed by the jury in the case over patent infringement involving the iPhone and other mobile devices.

Koh said Samsung lawyers "were on notice that the possibility of a jury taint was real," and scolded them for "a willful attempt to propagate that evidence they knew had been excluded."

But she rejected Apple's request for additional sanctions or to order a verdict in favor of the Silicon Valley firm.

She polled the jurors, asking if they had read any press coverage. One said he read a headline online, but did not read any articles. The others said they had read nothing.

"I will not let any theatrics or sideshows distract us from what we are here to do which is to fairly hear this case," said Koh.

Apple said in court documents released Thursday that "Samsung and its counsel have engaged in bad faith litigation misconduct by attempting to prejudice the jury" by releasing documents suggesting Samsung was working on its own smartphone before the iPhone was released.

"Samsung was not allowed to tell the jury the full story and show the pre-iPhone design... in development at Samsung in 2006, before the iPhone," said the statement from the South Korean firm.

Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, Philip Schiller, was set to testify Friday.

Jurors on Tuesday began hearing the biggest US patent trial in decades, with billions at stake for the tech giants.

Apple is seeking more than $2.5 billion in a case accusing the South Korean firm of infringing on designs and other patents from the iPhone and iPad maker.

This is one of several cases in courts around the world involving the two electronics giants in the hottest part of the tech sector -- tablet computers and smartphones.

While the results so far have been mixed in courts in Europe and Australia, Samsung is clearly on the defensive in the US case.

A third of the country faces drought-like scenario: IMD

The southwest monsoon in India this year was expected to be 85 per cent of the long-period average (LPA), with Punjab, Haryana, Saurashtra and Kutch regions in Gujarat and western Rajasthan experiencing drought-like conditions, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Friday. The forecast has a model error margin of +/- four per cent.
IMD considers the 50-year average rainfall of 89 cms as the LPA.

Addressing reporters a day after it lowered its overall southwest monsoon forecast from normal to deficient, IMD said drought-like conditions were developing in several parts of the country. “We expect 15 per cent shortfall in seasonal rains,” said Director General L S Rathore. He added 30-34 per cent of the country faced a drought-like situation. Rainfall that is 90-95 per cent of the LPA is considered normal, while anything below that is considered deficient.
Rathore said the maximum impact of the low rains would be on coarse cereals and the groundnut crop. The output of paddy, however, would be good this year. “I believe the drop in groundnut production would be compensated by the increase in the area under soybean,” he said. So far, Uttar Pradesh had received good rainfall and there was a possibility of a rise in the production of pulses because often, farmers planted pulses to compensate for losses suffered from other crops, he added.
In 2009, when India recorded its last drought, overall rainfall across the country was about 77 per cent of the LPA. In its forecast on June 22, IMD had said the total rainfall across the country during the four-month southwest monsoon would be 96 per cent of the LPA, with a model error margin of +/- four per cent.
Meanwhile, an empowered group of ministers on drought, headed by Agric-ulture Minister Sharad Pawar, on Friday sanctioned Rs 480 crore as immediate relief to Gujarat for rural drinking water. It also increased the number of man days under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Emplo-yment Guarantee Scheme from 100 to 150 per person. Pawar, along with Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh and other central government officials, on Friday held a meeting with Gujarat CM Narendra Modi on the situation in the state due to deficient rains. Earlier, the state government had sought Rs 14,683 crore from the Centre to help fight the drought-like situation in the state.
Yesterday, Bihar had announced its 25 of the 38 districts were hit by drought. Jharkhand has termed the situation in the state “drought-like”. The Rajasthan government has declared five districts—Bikaner, Nagaur, Jodhpur, Barmer and Jaisalmer—drought-hit, while Punjab has demanded a separate financial package for areas hit by low rainfall.