General Awareness

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - October 2016

Oct 2016

Feb 02, 2021

SpaceX to Launch World's First All-civilian Astronaut Mission this Year

SpaceX announced that it will launch four private individuals on a Crew Dragon capsule into orbit around the Earth, dubbed as the world's first all-civilian mission. It is scheduled to launch in the fourth quarter of 2021.
The company's spacecraft would be commanded by Jared Isaacman, the founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments, who is also a trained pilot. The mission, known as Inspiration4, seeks to raise support for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
The Inspiration4 crew will receive commercial astronaut training by SpaceX on the
Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft, orbital mechanics, operating in microgravity, zero gravity, and other forms of stress testing. They will go through emergency preparedness training, spacesuit and spacecraft ingress and egress exercises, as well as partial and full mission simulations.
This multi-day journey, orbiting Earth every 90 minutes along a customized flight path, will be carefully monitored at every step by the mission control.

Gaganyaan's First Unmanned Launch Slated for December 2021

The launch of the first unmanned mission of Gaganyaan is slated for December, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said. The mission was originally scheduled for launch in December 2020 but had to be postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Sitharaman said that as part of Gaganyaan, India's manned space mission, four Indian astronauts are being trained on generic space flight aspects in Russia.
The Rs. 10,000 crore Gaganyaan mission aims to send a three-member crew to space for a period of five to seven days by 2022 when India completes 75 years of independence.
The ISRO had started planning for the mission accordingly. The first unmanned mission was planned in December 2020, the second unmanned mission in June 2021.

Feb 01, 2021

Maine Company Successfully Launches Prototype Rocket

A Maine company that's developing a rocket to propel small satellites into space passed its first major test. Brunswick-based blueshift Aerospace launched a 20-foot (6-meter) prototype rocket, hitting an altitude of a little more than 4,000 feet (1,219 meters) in a first-run designed to test the rocket's propulsion and control systems.
It carried a science project by Falmouth High School students that will measure flight metrics such as barometric pressure, a special alloy that's being tested by a New Hampshire company - and a Dutch dessert called stroopwafel.

China's first Hualong One Nuclear Reactor Starts Commercial Operation

As per China National Nuclear Corp, the first of its Hualong One units, third-generation pressurised water nuclear reactors, began commercial operations.
The reactor in Fuqing in China's southeastern province of Fujian was first connected to the grid on Nov. 27 last year, following more than five years of construction work.
This marks that China has mastered independent third-generation nuclear power technology following the United States, France, Russia and others.
The Hualong One units, designed to have a 60-year lifespan, have an installed capacity of 1.161 million kilowatts each.
Construction of a second Hualong One unit at the Fuqing site is due to be completed this year.

Jan 31, 2021

NASA's Mars Rover Perseverance is in the Home Stretch of its Journey to Red Planet

The long deep-space journey of NASA's next Mars rover is nearly over.
The car-size Perseverance rover, which launched on July 30 of last year, is scheduled to land inside the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometres) Jezero Crater in mid-February.
Perseverance is the centrepiece of NASA's $2.7 billion Mars 2020 mission, which will break new ground in Red Planet exploration. For example, the rover will hunt for evidence of ancient Mars life on the floor of Jezero, which hosted a lake and a river delta billions of years ago. No previous Red Planet robot has done such work (though NASA's twin Viking landers, which touched down in 1976, did look for signs of extant organisms).

Jalandhar NIT Develops Multi Purpose Robot Cutebot

BR Ambedkar National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar has developed a multi-purpose service robot 'Cutebot', It can be used in a hospital environment as well as by security agencies for surveillance,
The robot is also enabled with a wheeled mobile platform. Doctors and medical staff can interact with patients of Covid-19 and other infectious diseases through the audio-visual screen of the robot while sitting in their rooms as it is equipped with a camera and voice communication system.
They can help in guiding patients on medicines and also deliver refreshments in the isolation wards. For security personnel, it can help in surveillance and in some other required areas. The robot has been designed jointly by Kuldeep Singh Nagla, Associate Professor and a specialist in robotics and automation, and Professor L K Awasthi, director of the institute.

Jan 28, 2021

Students of College in Coimbatore Develop Satellite for ISRO

Students of Sri Shakti Institute of Engineering and Technology have designed and developed a satellite at a cost of Rs. 2.5 crore. It would be inaugurated by chairman of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Dr. R Sivan on January 28.
The formation of the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre in June last by Prime Minister Narendra Modi inspired 12 students of the institute to collaborate with ISRO and develop 'Sri Shakti Sat'. After installing Sri Shakti Sat Ground Station in collaboration with Serbia-based Community for Space Programme Development, the institute became a member of the Satellite Networked Open Ground Station (SATNOGS) project.

Jan 27, 2021

SpaceX Launches 143 Satellites on Single Rocket

Elon Musk's SpaceX created a new world record by launching 143 satellites on a single rocket last night. SpaceX has beaten the Indian space agency ISRO's record of deploying 104 satellites in a single launch in February 2017. The launch vehicle for the SpaceX record-breaking flight was the Falcon 9 rocket.
The 143 satellites launched last night include commercial and government CubeSats, microsats and 10 Starlink satellites. Onboard was also a spacecraft belonging to NASA. With these satellites, SpaceX aims to provide near-global broadband internet coverage all over the world by 2021. According to sources, SpaceX offered a very low price of 15,000 dollars per kilogram for each satellite to be delivered to a polar sun-synchronous orbit.

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