General Awareness

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - August 2015

Aug 2015

Jul 19, 2019

Chandrayaan 2 Launch Rescheduled

Three days after the launch of India's second mission to the moon was aborted, the Indian Space Research Organsation (Isro) announced that the glitch was corrected and Chandrayaan 2 is ready for launch on July 22 at 2.43pm.
The new launch timing, however, would leave no margin for error due to a shorter window period.
The July 22 launch would be just two days after the world celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon and Neil Armstrong becoming the first man to walk its surface on July 20, 1969.

Jul 18, 2019

Isro Aims at July 21-22 Chandrayaan-2 Launch

After calling off the launch of Chandrayaan-2 due to a snag, Isro is now actively looking at a window as early as July 21 or 22, 2019 for a retry.
Isro's confidence can be attributed to the assurance given by the technical teams working at the Sriharikota launch pad who were "confident of rectifying the snag" in the next 48 hours.
The space agency is keen on the July 21-22, 2019 window because these are the earliest dates on which it will get a chance to navigate the lunar craft to the Moon's orbit. After this, the next possible window will open up only in September, 2019.
Every launch has an 'optimal window' to achieve desired results. July 15 provided the longest window of 10 minutes. Now, Isro has a window of at least one minute every day for the rest of the month.

US Marks Apollo 11 Mission 50 Years On

Fifty years after a mighty rocket set off from Florida carrying the first humans to the Moon, a veteran of the Apollo 11 crew returned to its fabled launch pad to commemorate "one giant leap" that became a defining moment in human history.
He and Buzz Aldrin, who piloted the module that landed on the Moon's surface, are the two surviving members from the mission that would change the way humanity saw its place in the universe. Their commander Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon, died in 2012 aged 82.
The spacecraft took four days to reach the Moon, before the module known as "Eagle" touched the lunar surface on July 20, 1969.The Washington Monument will be lit up between July 16 and 18 with a life-size, 363-foot (111-meter) projection of the colossal Saturn V rocket built by ex-Nazi war criminal Wernher Von Braun.
Collins described how the mission was broken into discrete goals such as breaking free of the Earth's gravity or slowing down for lunar orbit.

Jul 16, 2019

Robots to Install Telescopes

As the United States races to put humans back on the moon for the first time in nearly 50 years, a NASA-funded lab in Colorado aims to send robots there to deploy telescopes that would look far into our galaxy, remotely operated by orbiting astronauts.
The radio telescopes, to be planted on the far side of the moon, are among a plethora of projects underway by the U.S. space agency, private companies and other nations that would transform the moonscape in the coming decade.

Jul 15, 2019

Chandrayaan 2 Launch Put Off

The launch of Chandrayaan 2 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in the wee hours was put off after a technical snag was observed one hour before the scheduled liftoff.
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced that the launch had to be postponed due to a technical snag in the launch vehicle.
The revised launch date would be announced later.

Jul 13, 2019

Many Buyers for Russia's Top Missile System

Turkey received the first deliveries of Russia's S-400 missile defence systems despite Washington threatening the NATO member with sanctions over the controversial deal. The delivery marks a new high in warming ties between Ankara and Moscow.
The Russian Army began using the S-400 missile defence systems, designed to intercept and shoot down any threat from the sky, in 2007.
According to its producer, the state-owned Almaz-Antey company, it has a range of 400 km and can be deployed within just five minutes.
It consists of several vehicles: a command centre, various mobile radar stations and up to 12 launch vehicles that each carry four missiles.
Dozens of S-400s have already been deployed throughout Russia, from the country's most western point in the Kaliningrad exclave to its far eastern corners.
Four S-400s are also stationed in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014.
Two have been deployed to Syria, where Moscow intervened militarily on the side of the Damascus regime, to protect Russia's airbase in Hmeimim and the Tartus naval facility.
China was the first country to buy the weapon from Russia, ordering several S-400s for an estimated $3 billion. Deliveries began in April 2018 and the first tests took place at the end of June 2019.
Around a dozen other countries -- including Iraq, Qatar and Saudi Arabia have shown interest in the S-400, in some cases as a means of putting pressure on the US to lower prices on its weapons systems.

India, Russia Discuss Space Cooperation

India and Russia explored the possibilities for production of space systems in India during the discussions between National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and the visiting Director General of Russia's space agency ROSCOSMOS and former Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin.
Cooperation in futuristic technologies, including new space systems, rocket engines, propellants and propulsion systems, spacecraft and launch vehicle technology were also discussed.
The discussions covered all aspects of India-Russia space cooperation.

Mysterious Disc Near Black Hole Discovered

Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers discovered a disc very close to a starving black hole, something that should not be there, based on current astronomical theories.
The unexpected thin disc of material was found encircling a super massive black hole at the heart of the spiral galaxy NGC 3147, located 130 million light-years away.
The presence of the black hole disc in such a low-luminosity active galaxy has astronomers surprised.
Black holes in certain types of galaxies such as NGC 3147 are considered to be starving as there is insufficient gravitationally captured material to feed them regularly.

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