Science

Mars is quite similar to Earth, as per a NASA scientist. In a video interview, astrobiologoist Dr. Becky McCauley Rench said that the Red Planet wasn’t as dry always, as we see it today. As per NASA’s own website, “Mars, like Earth, has seasons, polar ice caps, volcanoes, canyons, and weather.” Signs of ancient floods

A team of researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have come up with a bipedal robot that performs the twin function of walking and flying. The team claims that their latest creation is not just agile but also capable of complex movements. Named Leonardo, the part-walking robot, part-flying drone is built in such

Having made a career out of playing an explorer of the cosmos, William Shatner – Captain James Kirk of Star Trek fame – did it for real on Wednesday, becoming at age 90 the oldest person in space aboard a rocketship flown by billionaire Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin, an experience the actor called profound. Shatner

A moderately strong solar storm hit Earth recently and created a spectacular light show that was visible from New York. This event took place as Earth entered a period of heightened solar activity. On October 11, a massive solar flare was spotted on the Earth-facing side of the Sun and it reached the planet on

Jeff Bezos-founded Blue Origin is set to take William Shatner of Star Trek fame to space and back safely on October 13. Though the launch was pushed back by a day due to anticipated winds in Texas, it isn’t holding Shatner’s fans back from gearing up for the liftoff. Late last week, a user tweeted

Inside a huge crater in Israel’s sun-baked Negev desert, a team wearing space suits ventures forth on a mission to simulate conditions on Mars. The Austrian Space Forum has set up a pretend Martian base with the Israeli space agency at Makhtesh Ramon, a 1,600 feet (500m) deep, 25 miles (40km) wide crater. The six

Singapore now has robots on its streets to carry out safety-related surveillance of citizens. The patrol robots, named Xavier, have been programmed to roam around the streets of Singapore and detect “undesirable social behaviour.” The robots move amidst people on regular pathways. They have been fitted with seven cameras to detect any anomaly in proper

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday launched Indian Space Association (ISpA), an industry body aspiring to be the voice of the country’s space sector, and underlined his dispensation”s commitment to reforms, saying the country never had a more decisive government. PM Modi cited the government’s success in privatising loss-making public airline Air India to assert that

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will virtually launch the Indian Space Association (ISpA) at 11 am on Monday. He will also interact with representatives of the space industry on the occasion. Taking to Twitter, the Prime Minister on Sunday wrote, “At 11am tomorrow, 11th October, I will join the programme to launch the Indian Space Association. I

Remnants of solidified lava brought back by a Chinese mission were 1 billion years younger than material acquired by other missions decades ago, according to an article in the journal Science, suggesting the moon cooled down later than thought. Samples brought back from US and Soviet missions were more than 2.9 billion years old. The

Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk is in for a ride. The valuation of his space exploration company has reportedly skyrocketed to over $100 billion (Rs. 75,30,000 crores) following a secondary-share sale last week. SpaceX investors sold up to $755 million (Rs. 5,685 crores) in privately held stock at the price of $560 (Rs. 42,171) a share,

Germany’s Benjamin List and David MacMillan of the United States on Wednesday won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their development of a precise new tool for molecular construction, the jury said. The duo was awarded “for their development of a precise new tool for molecular construction: organocatalysis. This has had a great impact on

NASA will launch a mission this November to strike an asteroid that may pose a threat to Earth. NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission will be launched in order to prevent a hazardous asteroid from striking Earth. The mission is set to launch at 10:20pm PST, November 23 (10:50am IST on the following day).

A Russian crew of two cosmonauts, a movie director, and an actress blasted off for the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday to shoot the first movie in space, the latest twist in decades of Russia-US space rivalry. The Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft is set to dock at 12:12 GMT (5:42pm IST) at the station, which orbits

US-Japanese scientist Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann of Germany, and Giorgio Parisi of Italy on Tuesday won the Nobel Physics Prize for climate models and the understanding of physical systems, the jury said. Manabe and Hasselmann share one half of the prize for their research on climate models, while Parisi won the other half for his

Egypt is famous for its gargantuan pyramids and the ancient mummies that are buried there. The ancient process of mummification to preserve a body has long fascinated people all over the world. Researchers have now been able to reconstruct the faces of three men who lived in Egypt more than 2,000 years ago. Based on

Astronomy enthusiasts are celebrating World Space Week from October 4 to October 10. To make this event memorable for young girls and encourage them to consider a career in space research and STEM, the European Space Agency (ESA) has put a special Barbie doll — modelled after European astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti — in zero-gravity at

SpaceX’s Inspiration4 crew carried out medical research during their space mission, talked to their family back on Earth, and enjoyed the company of a xenomorph, like those seen in Aliens. But they also took time out to capture the breathtaking views of the Earth through the huge glass dome named “cupola” on the SpaceX Dragon

A gigantic comet — one of the largest ever seen — is heading toward the solar system. The comet, named Bernardinelli-Bernstein (BB), was discovered earlier this year and will reach its closest approach to the Sun in 10 years from now, around 2031. However, the comet poses no threat to the Earth. It is likely

ISRO’s commercial arm, NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) on Friday announced its first “demand-driven” communication satellite mission as part of Space reforms announced by the Government in June last year. NSIL, incorporated in March 2019, got mandated to undertake operational satellite missions on a “demand-driven” model, wherein it has the responsibility to build, launch, own and

During monsoon, or even otherwise, there have been innumerable times that have we stepped out of our homes without an umbrella only to find the rain surprising us. To add to our troubles, on days even the weather forecasts have been bad at predicting the chances of rain and have let us down miserably. Now,

It appears the long-running feud between Elon Musk and fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos has surpassed the lower Earth orbit and gone extra-terrestrial. After Bezos’s Blue Origin challenged a NASA contract to Musk’s SpaceX for developing a lander to take astronauts to the Moon for the first time since 1972, Musk called out Bezos on social

Wood is a bad conductor of electricity. But scientists in Switzerland have found a way to generate electricity using wood and it is said to be safe and not give a shock. They have developed a new type of wooden flooring that generates power when a person walks on it. As surprising as it may

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has given new insights into Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. Researchers have noticed that the speed of the winds in the massive planetary storm has increased over the last decade. This observation came after the analysis of Hubble’s regular “storm reports”. The average speed of the winds near the boundary has increased by

Dinosaurs roamed Earth millions of years ago but little was known about them outside the scientific community till the early 90s. Interesting details about these prehistoric reptiles are now being discovered after studying dinosaur fossils. One of these fossils has revealed that a strange dinosaur with spiky, armored skin lived around 150 million years ago.

Astronomers at NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered at least six early galaxies, massive in size, which were “dead” when the universe was about 3 billion years old. These galaxies had run out of cold hydrogen, something necessary for the formation of stars. With no fuel to form

NASA is developing an augmented reality (AR) application for astronauts to enable them to inspect and maintain equipment on the International Space Station (ISS) without needing assistance from ground control. This, the agency hopes, will reduce the impact of communication delays between the ISS crew and NASA mission control in Houston, Texas, US. While the

William Shatner, 90, is reportedly going to become the oldest person to fly into space on board Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket. Shatner, who portrayed Captain James T. Kirk in the popular Star Trek franchise, is set to be part of the second crew to fly into space in the New Shepard capsule in July.

Engineers at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, US, have designed electronic microchips that can fly. These flying microchips, or microfliers, are the size of a sand grain and can fly without any motor or engine, much like a maple leaf or air-borne seeds of plants. These are the smallest-ever human-made flying structures. The microflier’s aerodynamics

Google accused India’s antitrust regulator in court on Friday of being a “habitual offender” by leaking confidential information of cases it was examining, an accusation the watchdog rejected. The Times of India and Reuters reported on Saturday that an investigation by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) had found that Alphabet’s Google abused the dominant

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)-led Team CoStar is set to participate in the Subterranean Challenge finals that are scheduled to be held this week. The challenge involves a demonstration of multi-robot autonomy in a series of tests in extreme environments. According to NASA JPL, Team CoSTAR will be among the eight teams that will be

Infosys on Wednesday announced a strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop quantum computing capabilities and use cases. Infosys will use Amazon Braket to explore and build multiple use cases in quantum computing as part of Infosys Cobalt cloud offerings. Amazon Braket is a fully managed quantum computing service that helps scientists and developers get

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk delivered what no previous human missions to outer space could. The company took four civilian crew members to outer space in a spacecraft with no professional astronauts on board and returned them safely to Earth after three days. While the successful mission was an encouragement to others attempting something similar, the