General Awareness

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - July 2016

Jul 2016

Jul 15, 2023

India Launches Historic Chandrayaan-3 Mission

India is bidding to become only the fourth country to execute a controlled landing on the moon with the successful launch of its Chandrayaan-3 mission.
Chandrayaan, which means "moon vehicle" in Sanskrit, blasted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center at Sriharikota in southern Andhra Pradesh.
It iss India's second attempt at a soft landing, after its previous effort with the Chandrayaan-2 in 2019 failed. Its first lunar probe, the Chandrayaan-1, orbited the moon and was then deliberately crash-landed onto the lunar surface in 2008.
Developed by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Chandrayaan-3 is comprised of a lander, propulsion module and rover. Its aim is to safely land on the lunar surface, collect data and conduct a series of scientific experiments to learn more about the moon's composition.
Only three other countries have achieved the complicated feat of soft-landing a spacecraft on the moon's surface – the United States, Russia and China.

Jul 14, 2023

Elon Musk Launches Artificial Intelligence Firm xAI

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, and owner of Twitter, announced the debut of a new artificial intelligence company, xAI, with the goal to understand the true nature of the universe.
Team members behind xAI are alumni of DeepMind, OpenAI, Google Research, Microsoft Research, Twitter and Tesla, and have worked on projects including DeepMind's AlphaCode and OpenAI's GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 chatbots. Musk seems to be positioning xAI to compete with companies like OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, which are behind leading chatbots like ChatGPT, Bard and Claude.
According to Greg Yang, co-founder of xAI, the start-up will delve into the mathematics of deep learning, a facet of AI, and develop the theory of everything for large neural networks to take AI to the next level.

Jul 13, 2023

India Welcomes its First Regional AI News Anchor, 'Lisa'

In a significant milestone for the AI industry, Odisha TV, an Odia-based news station, unveiled "Lisa," India's first regional AI news anchor. Lisa's introduction marked a groundbreaking moment in TV broadcasting and journalism, with the potential to revolutionize the industry. With Lisa's emergence as India's first regional AI news anchor, the boundaries of AI in the media industry continue to be pushed, opening up new possibilities for engaging and dynamic news presentations in different languages and regional contexts.
The news station revealed that she would soon be hosting news updates, showcasing her capabilities as an AI news anchor. Lisa possesses the remarkable ability to speak multiple languages, including Odia, English, and others.

With Zhuque-2, China Blasts Off World's First Methane-powered Rocket

A private Chinese company launched the world's first methane-liquid oxygen space rocket into orbit.
The Zhuque-2 carrier rocket took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northwest China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region and completed the flight mission according to procedure.
The launch was the second attempt by Beijing-based firm LandSpace - one of the earliest companies in China's commercial space sector -- to launch the Zhuque-2, and its success beat out US rivals in developing what may become the next generation of launch vehicles, which are considered to be less polluting, safer, cheaper, and a suitable propellant for a reusable rocket.
The Zhuque-2's first launch attempt failed in December 2022.

Jul 10, 2023

China Releases its First Open-source Computer Operating System

China rolled out its first-ever home-grown computer operating system called OpenKylin, as the country steps up efforts to cut reliance on US technology.
The OpenKylin 1.0 was developed by a group of Chinese companies led by China Electronics Corp, the country's largest state-owned comprehensive electronic information enterprise group.
Based on the existing open-source Linux operating system, China's version was built by a community of about 4,000 developers, and is used in its space programme and industries such as finance and energy.
Developing an operating system independent of US technology has been an important goal for China's tech industry, with many companies and organisations having contributed to the development of the OpenKylin system.

Voyager Space Signs MoU with NewSpace India Limited

Voyager Space, a global leader in space exploration, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), to foster collaboration in spacecraft launch and deployment opportunities on-board NSIL's Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) and Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).
Under this MOU, Voyager Space and NSIL will explore launch and deployment opportunities for small satellites orbited by SSLV and PSLV. The two organizations will also study the use of space qualified components from NSIL in support of spacecraft manufacturing, deployment, operations, and other areas of interest.
ISRO's state-of-the-art launch infrastructure and NSIL's experience in delivering payloads to orbit expands access to space for Voyager's global customer base. Voyager Space has previously flown customer satellites on two PSLV missions.

James Webb Telescope Finds Most Distant Supermassive Black Hole

The James Webb Space Telescope made a groundbreaking discovery, revealing the most distant supermassive black hole ever observed in the universe.
This enormous black hole is estimated to be 90 million times the mass of our Sun, making it a truly colossal structure. It was found to have formed 570 million years after the big bang, a significant period in cosmic history.
The black hole in question resides within the galaxy CEERS 1019, where astronomers have also identified two smaller black holes that formed 1 and 1.1 billion years after the big bang. Notably, the black hole within this galaxy is comparatively less massive than others detected in the early universe.

Jul 07, 2023

Tamil Nadu's Atsuya Secures Spot in Google's Start-up Accelerator Program

Chennai-based Atsuya Technologies was selected to participate in Class 7 of Google's Start-up Accelerator Program. It is one of 20 Indian companies that will participate in the three-month accelerator program.
Under the program, tech companies using artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) get access to Google's resources, programs, people, products, and technology. Atsuya is Tamil Nadu's only start-up to make it to the list of 137 companies from India selected by Google so far.
Atsuya Technologies is a deep tech company that leverages technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) and AI to achieve operational excellence in businesses, with a focus on sustainability.

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