General Awareness

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - May 2015

May 2015

Jan 13, 2018

Isro launches 100th satellite, 30 others

India reaffirmed its space prowess and commercial launch capabilities as it successfully launched its 100th satellite along with 30 other spacecraft, including weather observation Cartosat 2 series onboard the Polar rocket. This was PSLV’s longest-ever mission. With the successful launch, including 28 satellites from foreign countries, by the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, Isro put behind a rare failure it encountered four months ago. The space agency had suffered a setback after the failure of the PSLV-C39 mission in August last year. The previous mission to launch backup navigation satellite IRNSS-1H on board PSLV-C39 had failed after the heat shield did not separate in the final leg of the launch sequence, with the satellite getting stuck in the fourth stage of the rocket. PM Modi hailed Isro scientists for the successful PSLV C-40 mission. A visibly relieved Isro chairman A S Kiran Kumar, on his final mission as the chief of the space agency, said he was happy to provide Cartosat 2 Series as a New Year gift for the country.

Jan 10, 2018

ISRO scraps deal, Team Indus’ moon shot under a cloud?

India’s first, much awaited private moon shot by Team Indus has suffered a setback, with Isro recently scrapping the rocket deal with the startup. This may deal a death blow to the attempt to complete, if not win, the Google Lunar XPrize competition. The Google Lunar XPrize competition envisaged teams landing on the moon by March 31, 2018, and their rover moving 500m on lunar surface transmitting hi-res images to ground stations. The winning team gets $20 million. TeamIndus had two rovers to be flown. Inquiries reveal launch contract TeamIndus signed with Antrix Corporation, Isro’s commercial wing, was cancelled due to inadequate funds. The total cost of TeamIndus lunar mission was about Rs 450 crore. The cost for contracting Isro’s PSLV-XL was stated to be around Rs 150 crore.

Jan 09, 2018

SpaceX Launches Secret Zuma Mission

SpaceX blasted off a secretive US government payload known as Zuma, a mission whose nature and the agency behind it remains a mystery. The launch was initially supposed to take place in November but was postponed so the California-based company could take a closer look at potential problems with the fairing, or the nose cone part of the rocket that protects the payload. SpaceX has launched national security payloads in the past, including a spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office, and an X-37B space plane for the US Air Force. SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk’s goal is to perfect the technique so that rockets can one day become just as reusable as airplanes, thereby lowering the cost of space travel.

Jan 08, 2018

Tech trends that will define the future

From space tourism to electric cars and the rise of virtual reality, technology will transform our world faster than we can imagine. No one can predict how the future of technology will shape up, but we can make some informed guesses streaming services will expand and businesses will continue using AI bots and machine learning systems to run efficiently.
1.VR and AR will become communal experiences.
2.Democracy will cozy up to the blockchain technology.
3.AI will inspire how products are designed.
4.The first space tourists will get to orbit.
5.Electric car technology will reach its tipping point.
6.Businesses will use data and machine learning.

Titanic Discovery

A map has been made which is useful for modelling Titan’s climate, studying its shape and gravity and understanding its land forms. It took researchers a year to create, using data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. The map revealed several new features on Titan, including new mountains, none higher than 700 metres. It also provides a global view of the highs and lows of Titan’s topography, which enabled scientists to confirm that two locations near its equator are depressions that could be either ancient, dried seas or cryovolcanic flows. It revealed that Titan is a little bit flatter than was previously known. Researchers found that Titan’s three seas share a common equipotential surface, meaning they form a sea level, just as Earth’s oceans do The lakes on Titan, like on Earth, are topographically closed, with no inflow or outflow channels. They seem to be formed the way karst is on Earth, where underlying material dissolves and the surface collapses, forming holes in the ground.

3D-printed replicas to encourage face donations?

Most medical advances benefit the living. This one is for the dead. Sometime in the coming weeks or months, a brain-dead person, probably a man, will be wheeled into the plastic surgery department at New York University’s Langone Medical Center in Manhattan. A technician will slowly run a scanner over his face, recording the tiniest contour and detail. Then surgeons will cut off the dying person’s face and attach it to a disfigured man who has been waiting for a face transplant. And down-town from the hospital, in a basement below what could easily be confused with a Kinko’s, a team of New York University 3-D printing experts will work their own magic. They aim to generate a replica of the donor’s scanned face so lifelike or perhaps more accurately, deathlike that his family members will feel comfortable using it for their loved one’s burial, even in an open coffin.

Jan 05, 2018

Scientist produces ‘hottest hybrid chilli’

A scientist from Manipur has successfully synthesised the hottest Indian hybrid chilli during a trial breeding in the northeast, the country’s hot spot in chilli diversity with several pungent chillies having their origin here. The latest hybrid is derived from capsicum frutescens cultivar, capsicum chinense cv, and the hybrid of the two. Bhut Jolokia, or U-morok in Manipur, is currently India’s hottest chilli, after being certified by the Guinness World Records as the world’s hottest in 2007. The average pungency of hybrid chilli is 287,400 heat unitt (SHU) on the Scoville scale with capsaicin (spicy chemical compound in the chillies) content of 1.80%.

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