General Awareness

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - May 2015

May 2015

Feb 14, 2019

NASA's InSight Mission

The US space agency's (NASA) InSight mission has positioned the second of its surface instruments on Mars.
Known as HP3, the heat-flow probe was picked up off the deck of the lander with a robot arm and placed next to the SEIS seismometer package, which was deployed in December.
Together with an onboard radio experiment, these sensor systems will be used to investigate the interior of the planet, to understand its present-day activity and how the sub-surface rocks are layered.

NASA Bids Adieu to Opportunity

Opportunity, a remarkably durable NASA rover designed to roll along the surface of Mars for three months, has stopped communicating with Earth after 15 years of service, ending a mission that astounded the US space agency.
Engineers lost contact with the solar-powered vehicle on June 10 during a dust storm that encircled Mars. Since then, NASA officials made numerous attempts to reach the six-wheeled rover.
Opportunity landed on Mars in January 2004.

Feb 08, 2019

Japan Sets Date for Asteroid Rock Grab

According to the country's space agency (Jaxa), the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa 2 will attempt to collect a sample of rock from an asteroid on 22 February.
Hayabusa 2 reached asteroid Ryugu in June 2018 after a three-and-a-half-year journey from Earth.
It will descend on the surface and attempt to grab the sample from a pre-chosen site.
The spacecraft will return to Earth with the samples in 2020 after its exploration of Ryugu is complete.

NASA's First Mini-spacecraft

NASA has lost touch with the first mini-spacecraft that ventured into deep space, according to the US space agency which said that it is unlikely the twin CubeSats will be heard from again.
The MarCO CubeSats were launched in 2018 to test if such low-cost technology can operate in deep space.
The twins, nicknamed EVE and WALL-E after characters from a Pixar film, served as communications relays during the InSight's Mars landing, beaming back data at each stage of its descent to the Martian surface in near-real time, along with InSight's first image.
WALL-E sent back stunning images of Mars as well, while EVE performed some simple radio science.
As per NASA, having travelled well past Mars, the twin CubeSats seem to have reached their limit.

Feb 06, 2019

First 3D Map of Milky Way

According to scientists who have built the first accurate 3D map of Earth's home galaxy, the Milky Way's disk of stars is warped and twisted.
According to the study published, researchers from the Macquarie University in Australia and the Chinese Academy of Sciences have found for the first time that our solar system is anything but stable and flat.
Instead, it becomes increasingly warped and twisted far away from the Milky Way's centre.
From a great distance, our galaxy would look like a thin disk of stars that orbit once every few hundred million years around its central region, where hundreds of billions of stars provide the gravitational 'glue' to hold it all together.

Communication Satellite GSAT-31 Launched

India's latest communication satellite GSAT-31 was successfully launched by European launch services provider- Arianespace's rocket from French Guiana.
The GSAT-31 is a "high power" communication satellite with Ku-band, and it is going to serve and replace some of the satellites that are going to expire soon.
GSAT-31 is the country's 40th communication satellite which is configured on ISRO's enhanced 'I-2K Bus', utilising the maximum "bus capabilities" of this type.

Feb 05, 2019

Researchers Generate Lasers from Carrots

Researchers at Indian Institute of Technology Madras have demonstrated the possibility of generating biocompatible lasers from carrots, exploiting a process first discovered by Sir C. V. Raman who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1930.
This finding by the IIT Madras team, a first-of-its-kind development even globally, promises significant advancements in scientific and industrial research on optical spectroscopy and sensing.
Apart from being bio-friendly, the system they envisage is robust and reliable, with good and linear response to temperature.

Feb 04, 2019

Twitter may add edit feature soon

Micro-blogging site Twitter is considering the possibility of adding support for editing tweets, but the original version of the tweet would still be viewable.
Twitter was recently testing a new feature on Android that puts news stories at the top of the timeline to help users keep up with what is happening around the world.
On why the micro-blogging site lacks the feature, Dorsey said the platform was built on the SMS format of text messaging.

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