Science

In a recent study, scientists have taken to baking meteorites to release and analyse gases to have a better understanding of early atmosphere of other rocky planets out there in space. The study has revealed that the initial atmospheres of terrestrial planets may have been significantly different from many of the common assumptions used in

Amazon said on Monday it had secured nine satellite launch vehicles from United Launch Alliance (ULA) to support the initial deployment of its broadband Internet initiative, Project Kuiper. Atlas V launch vehicles from ULA, a joint rocket venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, is the first of many vehicles which will be used to deploy Amazon’s

China’s space port of Wenchang will build a $3-billion (roughly Rs. 22,490 crores) supercomputing centre by year-end to analyse data obtained from space, according to state media. With a planned investment of CNY 20 billion (roughly Rs. 23,100 crores), the supercomputing centre will provide big data services for industries including the aerospace and marine sectors

NASA is hoping to make history early Monday when the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter attempts the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. The space agency had originally planned the flight for April 11 but postponed it over a software issue that was identified during a planned high-speed test of the aircraft’s rotors. The issue has

Godzilla Shark, a monster shark whose fossilised skeleton was discovered in New Mexico in 2013, has been named ‘Dracopristis Hoffmanorum’, or ‘Hoffman’s Dragon Shark’, by researchers. The fossils of the 6.7-foot-long shark that lived 300 million years ago were unearthed during a dig at the Manzano Mountains, about 50km from Albuquerque in New Mexico, by

NASA successfully flew the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars on Monday, according to data and images sent back to Earth. “Altimeter data confirms that Ingenuity has performed its first flight – the first flight of a powered aircraft on another planet,” announced an engineer in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as the control room cheered.  A short

While just the sight of a spider can get many of us jumping out of our skin, have you ever wondered what a spider’s web sounds like? Well, a new study shows that it could send a shiver down your spine with its characteristic reverberating tune. Markus Buehler, an engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute

Despite being the most evolved species, there are some things we humans simply cannot do. Like, change the size of our brain. Over the years, it was found that certain members of the animal kingdom possess the ability to increase their brain size. And now, a new study has revealed that Indian jumping ants can

NASA awarded billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX a $2.9 billion (roughly Rs. 21,616 crores) contract to build a spacecraft to bring astronauts to the moon as early as 2024, the agency said on Friday, picking it over Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and defense contractor Dynetics. Bezos and Musk – the world’s first and

NASA helicopter placed on Mars could make its first flight over the Red Planet within two days after a successful initial test of its rotors, the US space agency said Friday. The current plan for the first-ever attempt at powered, controlled flight on another planet is for the four-pound (1.8kg) helicopter, dubbed the Ingenuity, to take

Elon Musk’s Neuralink startup is developing a brain-machine interface that will enable users to control computers and smartphones directly from their brain. Founded in 2016, Neuralink is now demonstrating the progress it has made over the years by showing a macaque named Pager playing Pong video game using a N1 neural link chip. In the

A three-man crew docked at the international Space Station Friday after a flight honouring the 60th anniversary of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becoming the first person in space. A Soyuz capsule carrying Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei docked at 1105 GMT (4:35pm IST), footage broadcasted by NASA

The images capture drama billions of years ago in the early Universe – glinting galaxies, glowing with stars that have exploded into supernovas and blazing jets fired from black holes.  Europe’s giant LOFAR radio telescope has detected stars being born in tens of thousands of distant galaxies with unprecedented precision, in a series of studies

NASA’s Ingenuity mini-helicopter has been dropped on the surface of Mars in preparation for its first flight, the US space agency said. The ultra-light aircraft had been fixed to the belly of the Perseverance rover, which touched down on the Red Planet on February 18. “#MarsHelicopter touchdown confirmed!” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory tweeted Saturday. “Its

An uncrewed SpaceX Starship prototype rocket failed to land safely on Tuesday after a test launch from Boca Chica, Texas, and engineers were investigating, SpaceX said. “We do appear to have lost all the data from the vehicle,” SpaceX engineer John Insprucker said in a webcast video of the rocket’s flight test. “We’re going to

A college science professor and an aerospace data analyst were named on Tuesday to round out a four-member crew for a SpaceX launch into orbit planned later this year billed as the first all-civilian spaceflight in history. The two latest citizen astronauts were introduced at a news briefing livestreamed from the Kennedy Space Center in

A space technology company in southern Nevada, US, is suing NASA, claiming the space agency owes it more than $1 million (roughly Rs. 7.3 crores) for work done during months of space station air performance tests last year. A NASA public affairs official did not immediately respond Monday to a message about the Bigelow Aerospace

Vocalis Health is an Israel based AI healthtech company that says it has developed a new software that can analyse a person’s voice and use that to detect if they have COVID 19 or not. According to the company, vocal biomarkers from people’s recorded voices can be used to screen, detect, monitor and predict health

Alphabet’s Google said on Wednesday it had sealed agreements with various Italian publishers to offer access to some of their content on the US tech giant’s Showcase news platform. Google News Showcase is a global vehicle to pay news publishers for their content online and a new service that would allow partnering publishers to curate content

India and France are working on their third joint satellite mission, even as the bilateral space collaboration is entering into multiple domains, including human spaceflight programme, ISRO Chairman K Sivan said. Sivan, also Secretary in the Department of Space, said many French companies are keen to tap into opportunities thrown up by recent reforms injected

The launch of a Russian Soyuz rocket, with 38 foreign satellites on board, has been postponed until Sunday, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said. The launch of satellites from more than half a dozen Asian, Arab and European countries, as well as Canada and Brazil, which had been scheduled for 0607 GMT (11:37am IST) on

Aerospace firms on Thursday credited NASA with a successful test of engines on a Boeing-built rocket for Artemis missions that aim to return US astronauts to the moon by 2024, more than half a century since the last lunar walk. NASA simulated a launch by firing the engines of the core stage of the Space Launch

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and National Institute of Technology(NIT), Rourkela have signed an MoU for setting up a Space Technology Incubation Centre(S-TIC). The MoU was signed Thursday after ISRO agreed to set up a Space Technology Incubation Centre(S-TIC) at NIT Rourkela. This collaboration with ISRO will open up new opportunities for research and development

Peering into the early Universe some 12 billion years ago, scientists in France have for the first time seen the incandescent filaments of hydrogen gas known as the “cosmic web,” they said Thursday.Cosmological models have long predicted its existence, but until now the cosmic web had never been directly observed and captured in images. Eight

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched the sounding rocket (RH-560) to study attitudinal variations in the neutral winds and plasma dynamics carried out on Friday at Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC), Sriharikota Range (SHAR). “Launch of sounding rocket (RH-560) to study attitudinal variations in the neutral winds and plasma dynamics carried out today at SDSC

The largest asteroid to pass by Earth this year will approach within some 1.25 million miles (two million kilometres) of our planet on March 21, NASA said Thursday. The US space agency said it will allow astronomers to get a rare close look at an asteroid. The asteroid, 2001 FO32, is estimated to be about

The bundle of instruments known as SuperCam on board the Perseverance Mars rover has collected its first samples in the hunt for past life on the Red Planet, mission scientists said Wednesday. The return to Earth years from now of the rocks and soil it retrieves “will give scientists the Holy Grail of planetary exploration,”

Russia and China unveiled plans Tuesday for a joint lunar space station, as Moscow seeks to recapture the glory of its space pioneering days of Soviet times, and Beijing gears up its own extraterrestrial ambitions. Though Moscow was once at the forefront of space travel – it sent the first man into space – its

The next launch window for a NASA crew to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX rocket has been pushed back by at least another two days, to no earlier than April 22, the space agency said. SpaceX, the private rocket company of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, had been scheduled to carry its second “operational”

ISRO has completed development of a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) capable of producing extremely high-resolution images for a joint earth observation satellite mission with the US space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR) is a joint collaboration for a dual-frequency L and S-band SAR for earth observation. “NISAR will be the