General Awareness

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - August 2015

Aug 2015

Aug 13, 2019

IIT Madras Introduced a Method To Recycle Urine

Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT-M) introduced the Project Water Chakra to recycle urine. The project was done by an IIT-M student with 3 project staff.
The Project Water Chakra won the Indian Innovation Growth Programme 2.0 award in July 2019. The project has developed a prototype for the Carbon Zero Challenge.

Chandrayaan-2 Onto Next Step

The Chandrayaan-2, currently revolving in a highly elliptical orbit around the Earth, will be injected in a trans-lunar path. This means the spacecraft will leave the Earth and move towards the moon.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will perform a trans-lunar injection to set the Chandrayaan-2 on its path towards the moon.
The spacecraft, which is currently revolving in a highly elliptical orbit around the Earth, will be injected in a trans-lunar path to cover most of the 384,400-km distance between the Earth and the moon.

Huawei Technologies Launched Its Own OS

Huawei has launched its own operating system — the HongmengOS, known in English as the HarmonyOS.
The operating system can be used across different devices from smartphones to smart speakers and even sensors. It's part of Huawei's play in the so-called Internet of Things, which refers to devices connected to the internet.
HarmonyOS will first be used on "smart screen products," such as televisions, later this year. Over the next three years, the operating system will be used in other devices, including wearables and car head units.
The OS will initially launch in China with plans to expand it globally.
HarmonyOS is open-source, which means that other device-makers could theoretically use its operating system.
Making it open-source could help the OS increase its scale and attract more developers to make apps for it.
Having a large number of useful apps is important for any OS to be successful.

SpaceX Falcon Launched Israel's Amos Telecommunications Satellite

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched Israeli telecommunications satellite called Amos-17 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The satellite was launched successfully into the geosynchronous transfer orbit .
The launch was a makeup launch for Spacecom when a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded on the launch pad in 2016. Amos-17 has been designed to provide enhanced voice, video and data services to customers in Africa and parts of Europe, the Middle East, India and China.

Kerala Signs MoU With ISRO VSSC To Promote Space Technology

The Kerala government and Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to give a push to the state's endeavour in space technology.
The agreement was signed by State IT Secretary M Sivasankar and VSSC Director S Somanath. It was signed in the presence of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan
With the MoU, Kerala is set to make major strides in the space technology sector.
This partnership will create an ideal ambiance for advanced research and development in space technology.

Aug 12, 2019

North Korea Tests 'New Weapon'

North Korea's state had unspecified military test that was supervised by the country's leader Kim Jong Un.
This is the latest in a series of launches that US President Donald Trump has played down ahead of talks with Pyongyang North Korea that its leader Kim Jong Un supervised test-firings of an unspecified new weapons system, which extended a streak of launches that are seen as an attempt to build leverage ahead of negotiations with the US while driving a wedge between Washington and Seoul.

Aug 11, 2019

Chinese Startup Is In Race For Reusable Rocket With Third Test

Chinese startup LinkSpace completed its third test of a reusable rocket in five months, stepping up the pace in China's race to develop a technology key to cheap space launches in an expected global boom in satellite deployment.
LinkSpace's RLV-T5 rocket blasted off in a desert in western Qinghai province at 0230 GMT.
It flew as high as 300 metres before returning to the launchpad on its own after 50 seconds.
The Beijing-based company aims to conduct a "kilometre-level" test at some point.
The RLV-T5 previously hovered 20 metres and 40 metres above the ground in two tests in March and April 2019 respectively.
China envisions constellations of commercial satellites that can offer services ranging from high-speed internet for aircraft and rural areas to tracking coal shipments and commuter traffic.
Reliable, low-cost and frequent launches will be key, with recoverable or partially-recoverable rockets like the Falcon 9 from Elon Musk's SpaceX one pathway to eventually affordable satellite deployment missions.
SpaceX has already used recoverable rockets on a number of orbital missions since a historic launch early in 2017, spurring Europe, Russia, Japan and China to speed up their own research into the technology.
LinkSpace's test flight came on the heels of a historic delivery of a satellite into orbit by privately owned Chinese firm iSpace.

Aug 10, 2019

NASA Scientists Find Outer Boundary Of Solar System, Call It Hydrogen Wall

NASA scientists have found the outer boundary of solar system and called it the hydrogen wall. Earlier, the space was believed to be a continuous expanse of an imaginary sheet called ether.
The scientists working at NASA think that they have found the outer boundary of our solar system.
It was earlier thought to be not properly defined. Now, they have said that their New Horizons spacecraft can see that invisible boundary.
They have named it the "hydrogen wall." It is located at the edge of our solar system.
The hydrogen wall has been described by the scientists as the place where bubbles of solar wind cease to exist. The mass of interstellar matter here is very small but strong enough to not let the solar winds to pass through.
At the same time, it is not so strong to bust through the solar wind build up. It acts like a wall pressing the solar winds inward.

Scientists Develop World's Smallest Stent

Scientists have created the world's smallest stent — 40 times smaller than any produced to date.
Stents have been used to treat blocked coronary vessels for some time now, but the urinary tract in fetuses is much narrower in comparison, said researchers from Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich), Switzerland.
In order to prevent life-threatening levels of urine from accumulating in the bladder, paediatric surgeons have to surgically remove the affected section of the urethra and sew the open ends of the tube back together again.
It would be less damaging to the kidneys if a stent could be inserted to widen the constriction while the fetus is still in the womb, according to the study published in 'Advanced Materials Technologies'.

NASA Discovers Cloaked Black Hole In Early Universe

Using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the ability of X-rays to pierce through the obscuring cloud, astronomers have discovered evidence of the farthest "cloaked" black hole found to date.
At only about 6% of the current age of the universe, this is the first indication of a black hole hidden by gas at such an early time in the history of the cosmos, said the study set to be published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Aug 09, 2019

Scientists Produce Radioactivity-Free Chernobyl Vodka

A team of British scientists has helped produce a radioactivity-free vodka called "ATOMIK" from crops near the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, according to the University of Portsmouth .
The team did find some radioactivity in the grain but said the normal distillation process meant the only radioactivity in the alcohol was natural Carbon-14 "at the same level expected in any spirit drink".

Why Chandrayaan 2 Will Take 48 Days To Reach Moon ?

USSR's Luna-2 craft took just 34 hours to reach Moon in 1959. Ten years later on July 20, 1969, Nasa's Apollo-11 mission carrying humans landed on Moon in just four days, 6 hours and 45 minutes. Besides being the world's first manned Moon mission, Apollo-11 was also the fastest trip of astronauts to the Moon.
So why is Chandrayaan-2 taking more than a month? The answer lies in the build of the rocket, the amount of fuel it's carrying and the speed of the lunarcraft.
In space, covering long distances requires high speeds and straight trajectories. For Apollo-11, Nasa had used Saturn V, a super heavy-lift launcher, to travel at more than 39,000km per hour.
The powerful rocket had a lifting capability of 43 tonnes, including the lunar module, service module and command module housing the crew capsule.
Saturn V's third stage put the modules (command with crew capsule, service and lunar modules) into the trans-lunar trajectory soon after orbiting Earth for the second time. The launcher and the lunar craft used powerful engines to reach Moon covering 3.8 lakh km in just four days
India does not have a rocket powerful enough to hurl Chandrayaan-2 on a straight path to Moon.
It's the reason ISRO chose a circuitous route to take advantage of Earth's gravity, which will help slingshot the craft towards the Moon.
The role of GSLV-MkIII, with only 4-tonne lifting capability, was limited to putting Chandrayaan-2 (3.8 tonnes) in the geosynchronous transfer orbit.

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