Science

OneWeb on Sunday announced the successful deployment of 36 satellites launched by ISRO’s commercial arm NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota.  Bharti Global is the largest investor in OneWeb, a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite communications company. This latest launch by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and NSIL

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is all set to make its maiden commercial launch of 36 broadband communication satellites on-board the space agency’s heaviest rocket Launch Vehicle LVM3-M2, the countdown for which began early on Saturday at Sriharikota spaceport in Andhra Pradesh. The 43.5 metre tall rocket is scheduled to lift off from the

Shortly after Friday midnight, the countdown will begin for the launch of 36 broadband communication satellites on board ISRO’s heaviest rocket Launch Vehicle Mark 3 (LVM3) from Sriharikota spaceport. The launch of ‘LVM3 – M2/OneWeb India-1 Mission’ is scheduled at 0007 hours IST on October 23 (midnight of October 22). OneWeb is a private satellite

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured a lush, highly detailed landscape the iconic Pillars of Creation where new stars are forming within dense clouds of gas and dust. The three-dimensional pillars look like majestic rock formations but are far more permeable. These columns are made up of cool interstellar gas and dust that appear

The Indian Institute of Technology-Madras and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) researchers have studied the interactions between microbes in the International Space Station (ISS), the institute said on Friday. A key finding is that a microbe that resides on the ISS, was found to be beneficial to various other microorganisms but hampered the growth of

ISRO plans to launch Chandrayaan-3, its third mission to the moon, in June next year with a more robust lunar rover onboard which is crucial for future inter-planetary explorations. The space agency has also lined up the first test flight of the ‘abort mission’ for Gaganyaan, the country’s first human spaceflight, early next year. “Chandrayaan-3

Europe will commission two rocket launches from Elon Musk’s SpaceX after the Ukraine conflict barred access to Russia’s Soyuz, the European Space Agency (ESA) confirmed on Thursday. The launches include the Euclid space telescope and the Hera probe, a follow-up mission to NASA‘s DART spacecraft which last month succeeded in altering the path of a

One of the most celebrated, awe-inspiring images of modern astronomy, revealing colossal spires of interstellar gas and dust called the Pillars of Creation, has been rendered anew with greater depth, clarity and colour by the James Webb Space Telescope. The new view of the pillars, first made famous when captured in 1995 by Webb‘s predecessor

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is expanding its satellite internet unit’s foray into in-flight WiFi services with the rollout on Wednesday of Starlink Aviation, offering customers a $150,000 (nearly Rs. 1.2 crore) airplane antenna amid mounting competition for airborne connectivity. Starlink, SpaceX‘s growing network of thousands of internet satellites, will charge customers seeking broadband internet on private

Space technology startups are being forced to limit their sky-high ambitions, as their venture-capital backers turn to safer bets due to the current economic turmoil, VC firm Space Capital said. Decades-high inflation, rapidly rising interest rates and the Ukraine war have roiled global financial markets, forcing investors to evaluate their investment strategies and focus on

ISRO’s heaviest rocket LVM3 will launch British start-up OneWeb’s 36 broadband satellites from the spaceport in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota on October 23, marking the launcher’s entry into the global commercial launch service market. LVM3 was earlier called GSLV Mk III. The launch of ‘LVM3 – M2/OneWeb India-1 Mission’ is scheduled at 12:07am IST on October

The fourth long-duration astronaut team launched by SpaceX to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA departed the orbiting outpost on Friday to begin their flight back to Earth, capping a science mission of nearly six months. The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying three US NASA astronauts and an Italian crewmate from the European Space Agency

Elon Musk said on Friday SpaceX cannot “indefinitely” fund the Starlink internet service in Ukraine and send it several thousand more terminals after a report suggested that his rocket company had asked the Pentagon to pay for the donations. Musk‘s comment on the question of support for the internet service in Ukraine comes after he

In July, a puzzling new image of a distant extreme star system surrounded by surreal concentric geometric rungs had even astronomers scratching their heads. The picture, which looks like a kind of “cosmic thumbprint”, came from the James Webb Space Telescope, NASA’s newest flagship observatory. The internet immediately lit up with theories and speculation. Some

SpaceX plans to announce two new space tourists slated to fly on the Starship rocket: Dennis Tito, the world’s first-ever space tourist in 2001, and his wife, Akiko.  The couple paid an undisclosed amount to fly around the moon on Starship once the vehicle is complete. They will travel with 10 other undisclosed passengers on a roughly

Japan’s space agency said it sent a self-destruct order to its Epsilon rocket after a failed launch on Wednesday because of a problem that meant the craft could not safely fly. The unmanned rocket, designed to launch in three stages, was taking several satellites into orbit on its sixth space mission. “The rocket can’t continue

NASA on Tuesday celebrated exceeding expectations during a mission to deflect a distant asteroid, in a sci-fi like test of humanity’s ability to stop an incoming cosmic object from devastating life on Earth. The fridge-sized Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impactor deliberately smashed into the moonlet asteroid Dimorphos on September 26, pushing it into a

Researchers have demonstrated a method to detect the vibrations of a mobile phone’s earpiece and decipher what the person on the other side of the call was saying with up to 83 percent accuracy. The team at Pennsylvania State University used an off-the-shelf automotive radar sensor and a novel processing approach to reveal this significant

During the Diwali festival on October 25, there will be a partial solar eclipse which will be visible from the city as well as from most parts of the country, astrophysicist Debi Prasad Duari said. The eastern metropolis, however, will be able to witness the partial solar eclipse, the second in 2022, for a very

The Union Minister for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh on Monday said the Indian startups would soon launch space satellites as well as satellite constellations and try their rockets. Speaking at the India Space Conclave here on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Indian Space Association, ISpA, Jitendra Singh said the “revolutionary and

The X-ray spectrometer ‘CLASS’ on the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter has mapped an abundance of sodium on the moon for the first time, according to the Indian Space Research Organisation. Chandrayaan-1 X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer (C1XS) detected sodium from its characteristic line in X-rays which opened up the possibility of mapping the amount of sodium on the moon,

A new NASA-funded technology for future space missions may charge an electric car in just five minutes on Earth, paving the way for increased adoption of such vehicles, the US space agency said. Researchers at Purdue University, US developed the Flow Boiling and Condensation Experiment (FBCE) to enable two-phase fluid flow and heat transfer experiments

A four-member SpaceX Crew Dragon team, including a Russian cosmonaut and the first Native American woman sent to orbit, safely docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on Thursday and moved aboard to begin a five-month science mission. Rendezvous of the latest NASA expedition to the orbiting laboratory came just after 5 EDT (2:30am IST)

A SpaceX rocket soared into orbit from Florida on Wednesday carrying the next long-term International Space Station crew, with a Russian cosmonaut, two Americans and a Japanese astronaut flying together in a demonstration of US-Russian teamwork in space despite Ukraine war tensions. A high-ranking official of the Russian space agency Roscosmos said shortly after the

The United States will on Wednesday carry a Russian to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX ship, in a voyage that carries symbolic significance amid the Ukraine war. Anna Kikina, the only female cosmonaut in service, is part of the Crew-5 mission, which also includes one Japanese and two American astronauts. Blast-off is set

Delhi Environment Minister Gopal Rai on Monday launched an advanced Green War Room to monitor air pollution 24X7 in the national capital and ensure effective implementation of winter action plan to curb it. This war room will work from the seventh floor of the Delhi Secretariat where a 12-member team comprising environment scientists and other

India’s Mars Orbiter craft has run out of propellant and its battery drained beyond the safe limit, fuelling speculation that the country’s maiden interplanetary mission ‘Mangalyaan’ may have finally completed its long innings. The Rs. 450 crore Mars Orbiter Mission was launched onboard PSLV-C25 on November 5, 2013, and the MOM spacecraft was successfully inserted

Meta has unveiled a new artificial intelligence system called ‘Make-A-Video’ that will allow users to generate short video clips by entering a text description of the desired scene. The announcement follows the company’s recent advancements in generative technology research, which seeks to give creators more creative control over artificially intelligent image generation. With the announcement,

NASA and SpaceX have agreed to study the feasibility of awarding Elon Musk’s company a contract to boost the Hubble Space Telescope to a higher orbit, with a goal of extending its lifespan, the US space agency said Thursday. The renowned observatory has been operating since 1990 about 335 miles (540 kilometers) above Earth, in

Astronomers have assembled the largest-ever compilation of high-precision galaxy distances, called Cosmicflows-4. Galaxies, such as the Milky Way, are the building blocks of the universe, each comprised of up to several hundred billion stars. Galaxies beyond our immediate neighborhood are rushing away, faster if they are more distant, which is a consequence of the expansion

In a world first, NASA has crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid in an attempt to push the rocky traveler off its trajectory. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test – or DART – is meant to test one potential approach that could prevent an asteroid from colliding with Earth. David Barnhart is a professor of astronautics

It will be “difficult” for NASA to make a new attempt to launch its massive Moon rocket in October, an official from the US space agency said Tuesday, with a lift-off in November looking more likely.  The SLS rocket, the most powerful ever designed by NASA, had to be returned overnight to its storage hangar

NASA’s mission to deflect asteroid is a step towards preparing the world for a potential future asteroid strike like the one which killed the dinosaurs some 66 million years ago, the chances of which are very slim in our lifetime, Indian scientists said. In a first-of-its-kind mission, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft successfully