Science

On the 53rd anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, NASA announced on Wednesday that it’s shooting for a late August launch of its giant, new moon rocket. NASA will attempt the more than month-long lunar test flight with three mannequins, but no astronauts, as early as August 29. There are also two launch dates

American Space Agency NASA has selected Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) to launch their new Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, from California which will explore dark matter and other subjects, according to a release by the agency on Wednesday. The launch has been tentatively set for October 2026, using SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy Rocket

A founding member of Elon Musk’s Neuralink left the company in recent weeks, according to two people familiar with the matter, the latest in a string of departures at the brain implant startup. Paul Merolla, who helped launch Neuralink in 2016 and worked on its chip design program, is no longer with the San Francisco

The M S Ramaiah University of Applied Sciences (MSRUAS) will build a student satellite “Ramaiah Sat” coinciding with ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’ to commemorate 75 years of Indian independence. The MSRUAS under Gokula Education Foundation (medical) on Tuesday signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Indian Technology Congress Association (ITCA) to develop and build the nano

A team of paleoanthropologists have unearthed a human fossil that is estimated to be around 1.4 million years old. The fossil was found at the Sima del Elefante archaeological site in Spain during excavations on June 30. The fossil contains fragments of a human skull and is said to be the oldest ever found in

While NASA’s Perseverance Rover might not have been successful in finding signs of life on Mars yet, it has discovered a strange piece of an object, which looks like a tangle of string or shredded material that is clinging together.  According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the image was captured by the

It has been an exciting week with the release of breathtaking photos of our Universe by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Images such as the one below give us a chance to see faint distant galaxies as they were more than 13 billion years ago. It’s the perfect time to step back and appreciate

The James Webb Space Telescope’s latest photographs demonstrate that it is capable of seeing more than just cosmic objects that are far away from Earth. NASA has unveiled Webb’s first images of our own solar system, which include shots of Jupiter and whirling asteroids. According to Mashable, these images were taken by engineers when the

Despite some immunotherapies been proven to be effective in treating melanoma brain metastases, researchers remain clueless about the reason behind the tumour’s spread to the brain. Now, through an extensive study of the cells inside melanoma brain metastases, researchers have unravelled details about the condition which could lead to the development of new therapies. Melanoma

The comet C/2017 K2 has offered a spectacular celestial show for stargazers and astronomers as it hurtled past Earth this week. In its closest approach to our planet, which was on July 14, the comet was about 270 million kilometres away. Now, while the comet may have crossed its closest point to Earth, the celestial

Back in 2011, a Martian meteorite called Northwest Africa 7034 was found in the Sahara Desert. Dubbed Black Beauty, the meteorite is believed to contain some of the oldest Martian igneous material. Now, in a new study, researchers have managed to zero in on the meteorite’s origin on the Red Planet. The findings are likely

The United States said on Friday it would resume flights to the International Space Station with Russia, despite its attempts to isolate Moscow over the invasion of Ukraine. “To ensure continued safe operations of the International Space Station, protect the lives of astronauts and ensure continuous the US’s presence in space, NASA will resume integrated

The European Space Agency (ESA) on Wednesday celebrated the first flight of its Vega-C rocket, which is designed to provide more bang for customers’ buck in the increasingly competitive business of launching satellites into orbit. Vega-C is an upgrade to the Vega rocket that made its debut in 2012 as a launcher specialising in lifting

Researchers in Japan have recently unveiled new plans for an artificial space habitat and inter-planetary train system connecting the Earth, Moon and Mars. Kajima Construction, in collaboration with researchers at Kyoto University, announced the futuristic plans last week at a press conference.  “There is no plan like this in other countries’ space development plans,” Yosuke

The powerful James Webb Space Telescope’s inaugural batch of images has opened a new chapter of cosmic exploration, but astronomers say the observatory’s most consequential discoveries may well be those they have yet to even imagine. Distant colliding galaxies, gas-giant exoplanets and dying star systems were the first celestial subjects captured by the multibillion-dollar observatory,

The European Space Agency (ESA) has officially terminated cooperation with Russia on a mission to put a rover on Mars, with Russia’s space chief furiously responding by banning cosmonauts on the ISS from using a Europe-made robotic arm. The ESA had previously suspended ties on the joint ExoMars mission, which had planned to use Russian

New York researchers transplanted pig hearts into two brain-dead people over the last month, the latest in a string of developments in the long quest to one day save human lives with animal organs. The experiments announced Tuesday come after a historic but failed attempt earlier this year to use a pig’s heart to save

NASA officials gathered today to unveil first full-colour images from the James Webb Space Telescope, the largest and most powerful orbital observatory ever launched. The first batch of full-colour, high-resolution pictures, which took weeks to render from raw telescope data, were selected by NASA to provide compelling early images from Webb’s major areas of inquiry and a preview of science missions ahead.

The James Webb space telescope has a huge task at hand – to replace Hubble which has been serving as our eye in the sky for decades. The first image released by the new telescope on Monday did not disappoint. It showed the clearest image to date of the early universe, going back 13 billion

Digging deeper through laboratory experiments and computer simulations, researchers at the Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zurich have proposed a new theory on the formation of the Earth. In their study, researchers developed models to demonstrate how planets formed in our solar system and shed light on their composition. “The prevailing theory in astrophysics and cosmochemistry

Elon Musk avoided discussing the collapsed Twitter deal, only repeating allegations of fake account issues at the social media platform, as he addressed an audience of moguls on Saturday, two people who attended the conference told Reuters. In a wide-reaching interview Saturday, Musk spent most of his time talking about Mars and extolled the virtues

Researchers have found that certain drugs used for treating ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) could help deal with the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. In a new study, researchers analysed how noradrenergic drugs, used in ADHD patients, can also be used for treating Alzheimer’s. These drugs tend to target the noradrenergic system which has locus coeruleus, a

Paving the way for the fabrication of artificial hearts, bioengineers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have successfully created a biohybrid model of human ventricles. The fabrication of a human heart is crucial as a heart cannot repair itself after injuries like other organs. But, to do so,

A group of scientists have identified that the fossil records of yunnanozoans, an extinct creature that lived 518 million years ago in the Cambrian Period, are the oldest known stem vertebrates. Stem vertebrates refer to creatures that were vertebrates, i.e. possessing a spinal column, but have now gone extinct though have closely related living vertebrates.

Twitter employees expressed disbelief and exhaustion on Friday after billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk said he was terminating a deal to buy the social media company in what could be the start of months of legal wrangling. Musk said Twitter breached multiple provisions of a $44 billion (roughly Rs. 3,49,060 crore)  merger agreement struck in April, including

Scientists have managed to determine one of the biggest mysteries in recent astrophysics – the formation of quasars in the early universe. These cosmic entities were first spotted in 2003, and soon after, over 200 quasars were identified by supermassive black holes. These 200 quasars had formed within the first billion years after the formation

NASA has a provided a tantalising teaser photo ahead of the highly-anticipated release next week of the first deep-space images from the James Webb Telescope –- an instrument so powerful it can peer back into the origins of the universe. The $10 billion (roughly Rs. 79,300 crore) observatory — launched in December last year and

Detroit airport in the United States recently added a futuristic information board that shows travellers personalised information about their flight. The “Parallel Reality” board, currently in its beta stage, has been developed by Misapplied Sciences in collaboration with Delta Airlines. As per a release by the airline, the screen caters to up to 100 people

Space travel company Virgin Galactic on Wednesday said it had reached an agreement with Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences to build two new air launch carrier aircraft for its spaceships. These new motherships will replace Virgin Galactic‘s existing carrier plane — the VMS Eve built by Scaled Composites — with the first of the new

Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) — the modular space station orbiting the Earth — conducted experiments on Tuesday to explore space physics, artificial intelligence, the human nervous system, and the effect of microgravity on the human body in space. Conditions in space, such as zero gravity, allow astronauts the ability to explore phenomena

Scientists revealed a large, all-season ozone hole in the lower stratosphere over the tropics comparable in depth to that of the well-known springtime Antarctic hole, but roughly seven times greater in area. The observed data agree well with the cosmic-ray-driven electron reaction (CRE) model and strongly indicate the identical physical mechanism working for both Antarctic

Researchers have developed new lithium-ion batteries that perform well at both freezing cold and scorching hot temperatures while packing a lot of energy. The batteries, described in the journal PNAS, could allow electric vehicles in cold climates to travel farther on a single charge. They could also reduce the need for cooling systems to keep

A satellite the size of a microwave oven successfully broke free from its orbit around Earth on Monday and is headed toward the moon, the latest step in NASA’s plan to land astronauts on the lunar surface again. It’s been an unusual journey already for the Capstone satellite. It was launched six days ago from