Sittampoondi is a small village in

Namakkal district Namakkal District is one of the 38 districts (an districts of Tamil Nadu, administrative district) in the States and territories of India, state of Tamil Nadu, India. The district was bifurcated from Salem District with Namakkal city as headqua ...

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is the southernmost States and union territories of India, state of India. The List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of Indi ...

India. The nearest city is

Tiruchengode Tiruchengode is a special grade municipality town located in western part of southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It is famous for the ancient hilltop Ardhanareeswarar Temple, dedicated to the unique combined male-female form of Lord Shiva and G ...

. Sittampoondi is known for its green Sugarcane and Paddy fields. The village is fed by irrigation from the river

Kaveri The Kaveri (also known as Cauvery) is a Rivers of India, major river flowing across Southern India. It is the third largest river in the region after Godavari River, Godavari and Krishna River, Krishna. The catchment area of the Kaveri basin i ...

, away. Sittampoondi is the group of eighteen villages (called Patties). Gounders are the dominant community people in this area and most of them are farmers.

Platinum discovery

The Government announced that

platinum Platinum is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Pt and atomic number 78. It is a density, dense, malleable, ductility, ductile, highly unreactive, precious metal, precious, silverish-white transition metal. Its name origina ...

had been discovered in this area.

Study on lunar soil

Geologists from

Periyar University Periyar University is a university in Salem, Tamil Nadu, India. It was established by the Government of Tamil Nadu in 1997. It is named after social reformer Thanthai Periyar E. V. Ramasamy. The University Grants Commissions, New Delhi bestowe ...

, Salem; the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchi; the

Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) is a public, deemed, research university for higher education and research in science, engineering, design, and management. It is located in Bengaluru, Karnataka. The institute was established in 1909 wi ...

, and the

National Geophysical Research Institute The National Geophysical Research Institute (NGRI) is a geoscientific research organization established in 1961 under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), India's largest Research and Development organization. It is suppo ...

, Hyderabad, "concurred" that rocks from Sittampoondi and Kunnamalai had similar properties to the soil on the Moon. S. Anbazhagan, Professor and Head of the Department of Geology, Periyar University, said: "We had done spectral studies on the lunar soil and we discovered its equivalent at Sittampoondi in 2004 when I was working in the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay. ISRO’s soil scientists coordinated with us in this project." This soil with rocks is used by ISRO to test its rover of

Chandrayaan-2 Chandrayaan-2 (; from Sanskrit: , "Moon" and , "craft, vehicle") is the second lunar exploration mission developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) after Chandrayaan-1. It consists of a lunar orbiter, the ''Vikram'' lunar l ...

and

Chandrayaan-3 Chandrayaan-3 ( ) is the third mission in the Chandrayaan programme, a series of Exploration of the Moon, lunar-exploration missions developed by the ISRO, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The mission consists of a Chandrayaan-2#Vikra ...

References

{{Reflist Villages in Namakkal district