General Awareness

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - May 2015

May 2015

Jun 19, 2015

Moon Engulfed in Permanent Dust Cloud

According to a study, the moon is engulfed in a permanent but lopsided dust cloud made of tiny dust grains kicked up from the Moon's surface by the impact of high-speed, interplanetary dust particles.
A single dust particle from a comet striking the Moon's surface lofts thousands of smaller dust specks into the airless environment and the lunar cloud is maintained by regular impacts from such particles.

Jun 18, 2015

Methane in Mars Rocks

In a clue to possibility of life below the surface of Mars today, an international team of researchers has discovered traces of methane in Martian meteorites.
The researchers examined samples from six meteorites of volcanic rock that originated on Mars. All six samples contained methane.
The discovery hints at the possibility that methane could be used as a food source by rudimentary forms of life beneath the Martian surface.
The findings will likely be used by astrobiologists in models and experiments aimed at understanding whether life could survive below the surface of Mars today.

Jun 16, 2015

Comet Lander Philae Calls Home

The European Space Agency's Philae comet lander, which dropped onto Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from the Rosetta spacecraft last November, beamed an 85-second wake-up message to Earth via Rosetta. It was the first signal from Philae in seven months since the probe fell silent in November last after its historic comet landing.

Jun 15, 2015

Saturn's Outermost Ring Much Bigger than Thought

Astronomers have found that Saturn's faint outermost ring is much bigger than thought, spanning an area of nearly 7,000 times larger than Saturn itself.
The ring, called the Phoebe ring, is believed to contain dust and ice particles ejected from Saturn's outer moon ‘Phoebe’.
New images taken from NASA's WISE probe suggest the ring is over 270 times the radius of Saturn.
The Phoebe ring begins about 3.7 million miles away from Saturn and fans out a 'surprisingly' distant 10 million miles, with a vertical expanse of about 1.5 million miles, making it well over 10 times larger than what was previously believed to be Saturn's largest ring.

Jun 14, 2015

NASA Lander to Carry Tiny Spacecrafts for Mars Fly-by

When NASA launches its next mission on the journey to Mars, a stationary lander in 2016 - the flight will include two revolutionary CubeSats.
CubeSats are a class of spacecraft based on a standardised small size and modular use of off the shelf technologies.
Several such CubeSats have been made by university students and dozens have been launched into the Earth’s orbit using extra payload mass available on launches of larger spacecraft.
If the flyby demonstration is successful, the technology will provide NASA the ability to quickly transmit status information about the main spacecraft after it lands on Mars.
The twin communications-relay CubeSats, being built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), constitute a technology demonstration called Mars Cube One (MarCO).

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