Science

Chinese citizens lashed out online against billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk’s space ambitions on Monday after China complained that its space station was forced to take evasive action to avoid collision with satellites launched by Musk’s Starlink programme. The satellites from Starlink Internet Services, a division of Musk’s SpaceX aerospace company, had two “close encounters”

Rogue planets have baffled astronomers for ages. Unlike regular planets which revolve around stars, these free-floating planets (FFPs) get ejected from star systems to move about in the galaxy on their own. In the latest discovery, astronomers found the largest cluster of rogue planets in a single star-forming region. With an approximate discovery of 100

NASA’s largest space telescope launch countdown has begun. The James Webb Space Telescope will be launched today on Christmas Day, December 25, and space enthusiasts can watch all the action live. The telescope is scheduled to be launched from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana, at 7:20am EST (5:50pm IST). The space agency

A Japanese professor has developed a prototype lickable TV screen that can imitate food flavours, another step towards creating a multi-sensory viewing experience. The device, called Taste the TV (TTTV), uses a carousel of 10 flavour canisters that spray in combination to create the taste of a particular food. The flavour sample then rolls on

The quest for life on planets other than ours has long held the attention of scientists. But most of their efforts have been unable to conclusively say if life really exists beyond Earth. From Moon to Mars, scientists have launched many probes and missions to uncover the mysteries. Venus, one of the most inhospitable planets

NASA has delayed the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, which would be the successor to the Hubble. The space agency said the launch will happen a day later than the earlier stipulated time, on Christmas Day, December 25, from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana, where high winds are a major factor. An

Cryptocurrency pioneer Justin Sun will fly to space on billionaire Jeff Bezos-owned Blue Origin’s flight next year and invite five other crew mates, he said on Wednesday, joining a small list of wealthy entrepreneurs indulging in space travel. Sun, who founded blockchain platform TRON, also revealed himself to be the anonymous bidder who paid $28

NASA has again delayed its planned launch of the uncrewed lunar mission Artemis 1 by at least a month. The space agency had initially targeted the launch of the mission on February 12, 2022, but issues in the integrated testing programme have forced another schedule delay. The space agency has said it is now looking

Paleontologists have found a never-seen-before fossil of a complete baby dinosaur curled up inside its egg. The fossil showed the remarkable similarities between theropod dinosaurs and the birds they would evolve into, according to a new study. The 70-million-year-old fossilised embryo has been named “Baby Yingliang” after the museum in China which houses it. The

A solar storm warning has been issued, with an expert saying that at least two “big-flare players” could be released from the Sun soon. Space weather physicist Dr. Tamitha Skov said that many sunspot clusters could be seen from the Earth. She added that though there were “no large Earth-directed storms yet,” they were on

A SpaceX rocket carried 52 Starlink internet satellites into orbit from California early Saturday. The two-stage Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from coastal Vandenberg Space Force Base at 4:41am (6:11pm IST) and arced over the Pacific. The Falcon’s first stage returned and landed on a SpaceX droneship in the ocean. It was the 11th launch

From our Moon to Mars to Jupiter, researchers are baring all guns to find more about the world around us. While the current focus is on the Moon and Mars, there already is a probe orbiting Jupiter. Named Juno, the probe’s goal is to understand the origin and evolution of the solar system’s largest planet.

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa returned to Earth on Monday after a 12-day journey into space, ending a practice run for his planned trip around the moon with Elon Musk’s SpaceX in 2023. The 46-year-old fashion magnate and art collector, who launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on December 8 along with his assistant Yozo

Arrival of winters is indeed a pleasant emotion for everyone and a bit more for birders, since with fall migration arrives the mesmerising flocks of migratory birds. And every birder emphasises on making the most of it, but for a new birder arises the question, “Do I need a spotting scope?” specifically for waterfowl and

The power sector is undergoing a rapid change globally as the world shifts to renewable energy and cuts down on using fossil fuels. However, a big roadblock to generating electricity from wind and solar energy is their intermittent nature due to unfavourable environmental conditions. To address this problem, storage was found in hydrogen batteries. But

An analysis of three-toed, meat-eating dinosaurs has revealed that they may have sprinted faster than a car being driven on the city roads. The footprints, left behind by these theropods over lakebed mud tens of millions of years ago, were studied by scientists. The researchers discovered two sets of fossilised footprints in Spain’s La Rioja

James Webb Space Telescope, the largest space telescope ever and the most noteworthy after Hubble, has been placed atop the Ariane 5, the rocket which will launch it to space from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The James Webb Space Telescope has been designed to find answers to outstanding questions about the universe and for

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has been feeding us with several discoveries from the Red Planet ever since it landed on it in February this year. After nearly 10 months of driving around the Jezero Crater, researchers are beginning to understand that the region had been formed from red-hot magma, possibly from a long-dormant Martian volcano.

Mars’ huge canyon system, Valles Marineris, may hold hidden water beneath the surface, according to a new study. The European Space Agency (ESA) and Roscosmos’ collbaorative ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) discovered large volumes of water in the canyon’s heart. By monitoring the hydrogen concentration in the uppermost metre of the Red Planet’s soil, TGO’s

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa is stationed aboard the International Space Station (ISS) this week. The 46-year-old is the first self-paying tourist to visit the ISS since 2009, and it appears his vacation is worth the money spent. The views he captured from the ISS could make anyone envious. Maezawa captured the Earth in a time-lapse

US space agency NASA is now carrying out tests on the crucial hardware that will bring rock and sediment samples from Mars to Earth for closer study. NASA is already collecting those samples using its Perseverance rover and taking images with a tiny helicopter named Ingenuity. Both these machines were launched on the Red Planet

NASA has announced a collaboration with aerospace company Axiom Space for its second private astronaut mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The space agency said it will now negotiate with Axiom on a mission order agreement for the Axiom Mission 2 (Ax-2). The mission, which will see a spacecraft docked to the ISS for

The Parker Solar Probe, one of the most ambitious missions launched by NASA, has become the first spacecraft ever to pass through the Sun’s atmosphere, venturing briefly into a region known as the corona. The historic feat was achieved in April but analysis of the data has confirmed the achievement only now. During its journey

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Monday for new rules covering the use of autonomous weapons as a key meeting on the issue opened in Geneva. Negotiators at the UN talks have for eight years been discussing limits on lethal autonomous weapons, or LAWS, which are fully machine-controlled and rely on new technology such

The United States is testing satellite resiliency to threats from China and Russia miles above the earth’s surface, just weeks after Russia shot down an aging communications satellite The computer-aided simulations included potential shooting down of the US missile-tracking satellites, satellite jamming, and other electronic warfare “effects” that are possible tactics in space warfare. Actual

Space mining is an idea that began taking hold at the turn of the century, and 10 years ago, it was passionately discussed. Many argued that space mining could revolutionise the commercial space economy by employing robots and private astronauts to explore and mine near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) for precious metals and even rare earth metals.

The extinction of dinosaurs took place about 66 million years ago but we are yet to know the full impact of the asteroid that wiped out this species. Scientists are still studying the disaster and continuously unearthing new aspects of the devastating impact. Now, researchers say that if the asteroid’s trajectory had been slightly different,

The US Federal Aviation Administration said on Friday it had found no safety issues after investigating allegations made against Blue Origin’s human spaceflight program. The FAA said in September it would review safety concerns raised by former Blue Origin employees. The FAA said on Friday it was closing its investigation after finding “no specific safety

Technology has come as an incredible force multiplier for law-enforcement agencies across the world and they are exploring ways to gain the most out of it to make the world a more secure place. In this effort, Australian federal police say they are using an advanced DNA sequencing technology to predict the physical appearance of potential

A star younger than our Sun but similar in size has got scientists worried and they say everyone should be worried too. The star, called EK Draconis, is located dozens of lights years away from us and has been spewing out massive fireworks. Scientists recently watched it having an energy blast and ejecting charged particles

Astronomers have found a giant planet that is 10 times bigger than Jupiter and is orbiting a pair of massive, extremely hot stars, an environment previously thought too inhospitable for a planet to form. Scientists have named the planet “b Centauri (AB)b” or “b Centauri b”. The European Southern Observatory (ESO), which photographed the planet

India will launch its much-awaited human spaceflight mission in 2023, Union Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh said. Named Gaganyaan, the first human space mission to launch from Indian soil was initially set for August 2022, to mark 75 years of India’s independence but the coronavirus-induced pandemic forced a delay in its timeline. Singh acknowledged

NASA has warned about the potential impacts of “swirling Sun debris” created by a solar storm likely to hit the Earth by December 11. The agency said a coronal mass ejection (CME) of plasma and magnetic field escaped the Sun earlier this week and is expected to possibly strike by Saturday. Astronomers and space scientists