The above is the dream of A P J Abdul Kalam. Shouldn’t we make this dream of every Indian.

India on Friday became the fourth nation to have its flag flying on the Moon’s surface when Chandrayaan-1’s Moon Impact Probe device, – which has the Indian Tricolour painted on it – touched down.

The 35-kilo payload crash-landed on the lunar surface at around 2030 hrs IST. The MIP has started sending its first signals to the satellite.

It also contains equipment which will help scientists design a lunar lander or rover for the upcoming Chandrayaan-2 mission.

There’s a lot tucked away inside the MIP. There’s a device to constantly check its height as it falls, another to check what the air on the moon is made of and even a video camera to photograph the moon from close range.

Those photographs will help ISRO decide where to land India’s first moon rover, a few years from now. The MIP also has the Indian flag painted on its sides a Sanskrit shloka as well.

The MIP disconnected from Chandrayaan at 100 km from the moon. As it fell, it kept sending information back to the satellite.

Closer to the surface, rockets were fired to slow down its speed and soften impact.

After 30 min of free fall, the MIP crash-landed on the south pole of moon.

The MIP is the brainchild of former president APJ Abdul Kalam. He said it’s his dream to see an Indian astronaut walk the moon.

“The youth of India should consider that encouragement of the youth is the most powerful resource on the earth, above and underneath, India will do it,” he said.

Imagine that the Indian Standard Time (IST) is advanced by half-an-hour to be six hours ahead of the Greenwich Mean Time or GMT.

“I can stick my neck out and say it is a win-win situation,” DP Sen Gupta, honorary professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) and one of the scientists who pitched this idea, told the Hindustan Times from Bangalore.

The likely effects: office goers will get an extra half-hour of evening daylight to commute home. Petty crime in the dusk may drop. Sixteen per cent of peak evening electricity will be saved.

But at 8 am in Silicon Valley, California, it will be 9 or 10 pm in India instead of 8.30 pm or 9.30 pm today. Global businesses operating out of India will overlap more with China and Japan than the US.

Children in Punjab will go to school in the dark due to later winter sunrises, unless schools change timings. And families in the north and west will switch on lights early morning for a few winter weeks. “Six hours would be an integral number. We belong to five per cent of the countries with fractional time differences (five and half hours),” Sen pointed out.

But the IST, the official time standard since Independence, will not be modified unless the Cabinet decides to. “I am aware of the proposal,” Union Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal told HT. “It’s for Cabinet to decide, it’s not a science and technology issue.”

The scientists are sending their paper to the Planning Commission. “We would be happy to make a presentation to them or a Parliamentary sub-committee,” said the NIAS professor Dilip Ahuja.

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