NASA Astronaut Mark Vande Hei Back on Earth after Record-breaking Mission
Vande Hei, who lived in space for 355 consecutive days, setting a new record for the longest single spaceflight by an American astronaut, arrived in Houston at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC). As per NASA protocol, Vande Hei was then flown back to Houston to start his recovery from living for nearly a year in microgravity.
Vande Hei's mission surpasses the previous single-spaceflight mark by a U.S. astronaut, which was Scott Kelly's 340-day excursion in 2015-16. The overall single-spaceflight record of nearly 438 continuous days is held by Russian cosmonaut Valery Poliyakov, who was on the Soviet-Russian Mir space station between 1994 and 1995.
Mar 30, 2022
Petascale Supercomputer PARAM Shakti at IIT Kharagpur Dedicated to the Nation
PARAM Shakti", a Petascale Supercomputer "at IIT Kharagpur, was dedicated to the nation under National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) – a joint initiative of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and Department of Science and Technology (DST). PARAM Shakti supercomputing facility is accelerating the research and development activities in multidisciplinary domains of computational and data sciences as it provides large-scale computing power to the user community of IIT Kharagpur and neighbouring academic and R&D institutes.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between IIT Kharagpur and Centre for Development in Advanced Computing (CDAC) in March 2019 to establish this state-of the art Supercomputing Facility with 17680 CPU cores along with 44 GPUs.
The new high-performance computational facility would aid researchers to solve large-scale problems of different fields of Science and Engineering. Some of the identified focus areas in which this supercomputing based research will be of great value addition are: Computational Fluid Dynamics, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data Analytics, Climate Change & Digital Earth, Computational Biology, Cryptography & Security, Smart Infrastructure & Sustainable Cities, Smart Materials etc.
Mar 29, 2022
IIT-Mandi, Researchers Find Method to Convert Plastic into Hydrogen, Useful Chemicals
The researchers of the Indian Institute of Technology, Mandi, produced new photocatalyst that converts plastic to hydrogen and other useful products. The researchers developed a method that can transform plastic into hydrogen when exposed to light. The researchers said that the generation of hydrogen from plastics is particularly useful because the gas is considered the most practical non-polluting fuel of the future.
Plastics, most of which are derived from petroleum, are not bio-degradable, which cannot be easily broken down into harmless products.
Mahatma Gandhi's Granddaughter Launches a Website 'Modi Story'
The granddaughter of Mahatma Gandhi Sumitra Gandhi Kulkarni inaugurated the Modi Story website which is a collection of stories from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's life. Modi story is a volunteer-driven initiative to bring together inspiring moments from Narendra Modi's life, as narrated by his co-travellers.
The people who are associated with him closely recollected their memories about the works of Mr Modi. Several prominent personalities, including Olympic gold medalist Neeraj Chopra, classical dancer Sonal Mansingh, actor-cum-politician Manoj Tiwari, former Finance Secretary Hasmukh Adhia and spiritual leader Swami Avdheshanand Giri, have contributed to the anecdotal compilation.
ESA-NASA's Solar Probe Snaps Closest-ever Photo of Sun
European Space Agency's (ESA) and NASA's Solar Orbiter snapped images of the Sun in unprecedented detail.
One of the images, taken by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) shows the Sun's full disc and outer atmosphere, the corona in the highest resolution image ever taken. Another image, taken by the Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument, represents the first image of a full Sun—the first-of-its kind in 50 years. It was taken at the Lyman-beta wavelength of ultraviolet light that is emitted by hydrogen gas.
The high-resolution telescope of EUI takes pictures at such high spatial resolution that, at that close distance, a mosaic of 25 individual images is needed to cover the entire Sun. Taken one after the other, the full image was captured over a period of more than four hours because each tile takes about 10 minutes, including the time for the spacecraft to point from one segment to the next.
Mar 26, 2022
More than 1,200 Doordarshan Analogue Terrestrial TV (ATT) Transmitters Shut Down
In March 2022, more than 1,200 Doordarshan Analogue Terrestrial TV (ATT) transmitters have been shut down in a phased manner as they had become obsolete, said Anurag Singh Thakur, the Minister of Information and Broadcasting . This, in view of emerging trends in the broadcasting and availability of "DD Free Dish", a free-to-air Direct to Home service of Prasar Bharati, under which over 150 TV channels including 51 educational ones were being provided free of cost, without any monthly subscription.
Mar 25, 2022
Milky Way Evolved in Few Different Phases, New Research Suggests
The formation of our Milky Way Galaxy can be split up qualitatively into different assembly phases that resulted in its structurally different stellar populations: the halo and the disk components. Revealing a quantitative overall picture of Milky Way's assembly requires a large sample of stars with very precise ages. In new research, astronomers at the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy analyzed such a sample using subgiant stars.
Subgiant stars, which are stars sustained by hydrogen shell fusion, can be unique tracers for such purposes, as they exist in the brief stellar evolutionary phase that permits the most precise and direct age determination, because their luminosity is a direct measure of their age.
Moreover, the chemical element compositions determined from the spectra of their photosphere surfaces accurately reflect their birth material composition billions of years ago.
"This makes subgiants the best practical tracers of Galactic archaeology, even compared to main-sequence turn-off stars, whose surface abundances may be altered by atomic diffusion effects.
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