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Cape Chapatti observatory tracks Currynauts and Vindaloo 1 India is
currently jubilant and celebrating the arrival of its Vindaloo 1
spacecraft at the Moon.
A reverse thrusters blast from its fiery garam masala hot fusion
nuclear drive unit on Saturday evening (local time) slowed the
Vindaloo 1 sufficiently for it to be captured by the lunar body's
gravity.
Further braking by the craft's two on-board Currynauts with a golf
umbrella will bring the Indian satellite down to a near-circular, 100
km orbit from where it can begin its mapping mission.
Launched on 22 October from Cape Chapatti, the Vindaloo 1 is the first
of India's space probes to get higher than the roof without going into
self-destruct mode and not so much flying as plummeting back to the
ground.
Earlier craft, built from the ancient designs for 'vimanas' found in
Vedic literature and specifically The Mahabharata, were all powered by
firewood and never seemed to achieve the necessary head of steam to
reach orbital status.
However, the Vindaloo 1, fuelled by an exotic sub-atomic blend of
Kashmiri s**** oil, garam masala paste and the rare earth element
Poppadomite (which re****tedly has the radioactive half life of three
weeks) will hopefully have enough chug left to return to Earth on
completion of its mission.
The mission's purpose, besides giving India a boost from its customary
'hopeless case' Third World status, is to compile a 3D atlas of the
lunar surface, mapping prime real estate sites for the strategic
positioning of future Poundland outlets and chains of the
Subcontinent's spicy take-aways.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) spacecraft was
re****tedly constructed by the consolation prize team of last year's
Smegmadale Scrapheap Challenge final, who were classified by the
programme's judges as the only team of blokes who could **** up a
perfectly good anvil.
However since that time the team have gone from strength to strength,
with all of them graduating with NVQ 2 diplomas from the prestigious
Calcutta Institute for Advanced Cosmology and Aerospace Research.
The Indian mission's scheduled off-world experiments include launching
a 10 kilo probe that will be released from the mother****p to slam into
the lunar surface. Given the scientific title of a Moon Impact Probe
(MIP), the thing basically consists of two house bricks tied together
with a camera taped to them and an Indian flag trailing out behind,
and will record video footage on the way down until it smashes
pointlessly into the lunar surface with a silent dust-raising 'whack'.
Communicating with the Vindaloo 1 from the ISRO's Delhi-based call
centre headquarters, mission control chief Mahat Macoat exhibited his
customary annoying display of neck-gyrating while multi-tasking
commands
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