171559600
submission
William Robinson writes:
ISRO, India's space agency, has released the first images of the Moon taken by the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, which entered lunar orbit on Saturday. After the spacecraft orbited the Earth for about 10 days, it was sent into the translunar orbit last Tuesday and successfully injected into the lunar orbit on Saturday. The lander and rover being carried by spacecraft are due to reach the surface on 23 August. If successful, India will be the first country to perform a controlled "soft landing" near the south pole. The rover is carrying five instruments which will focus on finding out about the physical characteristics of the surface of the Moon, the atmosphere close to the surface and the tectonic activity to study what goes on below the surface. ISRO has also released video of Lunar orbit insertion of the spacecraft.
145226066
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William Robinson writes:
A toaster-size, experimental instrument aboard Perseverance called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE), has successfully demonstrated technology to convert some of the Red Planet’s thin, carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere into oxygen. The conversion process requires high levels of heat to reach a temperature of approximately 1,470 degrees Fahrenheit (800 Celsius). To accommodate this, the MOXIE unit is made with heat-tolerant materials. These include 3D-printed nickel alloy parts, which heat and cool the gases flowing through it, and a lightweight aerogel that helps hold in the heat. In this first operation, MOXIE’s oxygen production was quite modest – about 5 grams, equivalent to about 10 minutes worth of breathable oxygen for an astronaut and MOXIE is designed to generate up to 10 grams of oxygen per hour. For future missions, Oxygen is the key for rockets or astronauts as we move toward our goal of one day seeing humans on Mars because getting four astronauts off the Martian surface on a future mission would require approximately 15,000 pounds (7 metric tons) of rocket fuel and 55,000 pounds (25 metric tons) of oxygen.
114147570
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William Robinson writes:
An unmanned spacecraft, Chandrayaan 2, India launched last month has begun orbiting the moon before it lands on the far side to search for water. The spacecraft is in orbit of 114 km x 18072 km and will continue circling the moon in a tighter orbit until reaching a distance of about 100 km x 30 km from the moon's surface. The lander will then separate from the orbiter and use rocket fuel to brake as it attempts to land in the south polar region of the moon on Sept. 7. The mission is carrying a total of 14 payloads—13 Indian and one passive payload from Nasa—with special focus of the orbiter on mapping craters in the polar region, besides checking for water again.
109051968
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William Robinson writes:
Using cores drilled from coral, scientists have been able to produce the first 400-year-long seasonal record of El Nino events. This understanding of El Niño events is vital because they produce extreme weather across the globe with particularly profound effects on precipitation and temperature extremes, all over the world. The study concludes that a new category of El Niño has become far more prevalent in the last few decades than at any time in the past four centuries. Over the same period, traditional El Niño events have become more intense.
107853034
submission
William Robinson writes:
Japanese Spacecraft, Hayabusa2, released an explosive onto an asteroid to make a crater on its surface. The spacecraft safely evacuated and remained intact after dropping a "small carry-on impactor" made of copper onto the asteroid. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, said that they plan plans to send Hayabusa2 back to the site later, when the dust and debris settle, for observations from above and to collect samples from underground that have not been exposed to the sun or space rays. If successful, it would be the first time for a spacecraft to take such materials. In a 2005 "deep impact" mission to a comet, NASA observed fragments after blasting the surface but did not collect them.
99475037
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William Robinson writes:
Nearly 438 bitcoins, worth 3m$, were stolen from a top exchange firm in India in what is being billed as the biggest cryptocurrency theft in the country so far. The exchange, which has over two lakh users across the country, found that all the bitcoins that were stored offline had vanished. It was later found that the private keys — the password that is kept by the company and is stored offline — were leaked online, leading to the hack. The company tried to trace the hackers, but found that all the data logs of the affected wallets had been erased, leaving no trails about where the bitcoins were transferred.
90360211
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William Robinson writes:
A relatively large, 650m, near-Earth asteroid discovered nearly three years ago will fly safely past Earth on April 19 at a distance of about 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers), or about 4.6 times the distance from Earth to the moon. The asteroid will approach Earth from the direction of the sun and will become visible in the night sky after April 19. It is predicted to brighten to about magnitude 11, when it could be visible in small optical telescopes for one or two nights. For comparison, Chelyabinsk meteor was 20m.
89843727
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William Robinson writes:
Scientists at the Swedish Museum of Natural History have found fossils of 1.6 billion year old probable red algae. The scientists found two kinds of fossils resembling red algae in uniquely well-preserved sedimentary rocks at Chitrakoot in central India. One type is thread-like, the other one consists of fleshy colonies. The scientists were able to see distinct inner cell structures and so-called cell fountains, the bundles of packed and splaying filaments that form the body of the fleshy forms and are characteristic of red algae. The Indian fossils, 400 million years older and by far the oldest plant-like fossils ever found, suggest that the early branches of the tree of life need to be recalibrated. The finding could push the beginning of complex life 400 million earlier than thought, scientists believe.
85127361
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William Robinson writes:
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have engineered a potentially game-changing solar cell that cheaply and efficiently converts atmospheric carbon dioxide directly into usable hydrocarbon fuel, using only sunlight for energy. This artificial leaf delivers syngas, or synthesis gas, a mixture of hydrogen gas and carbon monoxide. Syngas can be burned directly, or converted into diesel or other hydrocarbon fuels. The discovery opens up possibilities of clean reusable energy.
84272731
submission
William Robinson writes:
India's ISRO used its workhorse PSLV-C34 to inject 20 satellites, which includes 17 satellites from various countries like US, Canada, Germany and Indonesia. In the final stages of the mission, ISRO also demonstrated the vehicle's capability to place satellites in different orbits. In the demonstration, the vehicle reignited twice after its fourth and final stage and moved further a few kilometres into another orbit. Also included are couple of satellites from academic institutes, Sathyabamasat from Sathyabhama University, Chennai and Swayam from College of Engineering, Pune.
83598925
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William Robinson writes:
India will use a mini-rocket with a booster to fly a winged reusable launch vehicle into lower earth orbit on May 23 for demonstrating the technology. Called as RLV-TD, a nine meter 1.7-tonne will be launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota. If everythig goes well, it will reach about 70 km from the earth, and will plunge into the Bay of Bengal. This flight is using dummy vehicle to demonstrate hypersonic and aero-thermo dynamics of the winged re-entry vehicle with autonomous mission management to land after passing through very high temperatures during re-entry.
75022125
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William Robinson writes:
The government of India has blocked through a secret order. Among the sites that are banned include some of the world's biggest porn sites like Pornhub and Xvideos. The ban has provoked debates in the country about extreme and unwarranted moral policing by the government. The action has come after the Supreme Court of India had refused to ban porn sites in India.
73319211
submission
William Robinson writes:
While using a laser to cut a sponge made of crumpled sheets of Graphene oxide, Researchers accidentally discovered that it can turn light into motion. As the laser cut into the material, it mysteriously propelled forward. Baffled, researchers investigated further. The Graphene material was put in a vacuum and again shot with a laser. Incredibly, the laser still pushed the sponge forward, and by as much as 40 centimeters. Researchers even got the Graphene to move by focusing ordinary sunlight on it with a lens.Though scientists are not sure why this happens, they are excited with new possibilities such as light propelled spacecraft that does not need fuel.
73217693
submission
William Robinson writes:
Under the direction of Latha Venkataraman, associate professor of applied physics at Columbia Engineering, researchers have designed a new technique to create a single-molecule diode, that has rectification ratio as high as 250, and 'ON' current as high as 0.1 microamps. The idea of creating a single-molecule diode was suggested by Arieh Aviram and Mark Ratner who theorized in 1974, which has been the 'holy grail' of molecular electronics ever since its inception to achieve further miniaturization, because single molecule represent the limit of miniaturization.
64727599
submission
William Robinson writes:
Before the spacecraft is scheduled to enter Mars orbit, Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) scientists reignited the Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft's main engine for four seconds as a trial. The liquid apogee motor (LAM) engine has been idle for about 300 days since the spacecraft left the Earth's orbit on a Martian trajectory on December 1, 2013. The short-duration test was to ensure that the engine is in good shape for the 24-minute crucial manoeuvre on Wednesday.
