India's space ambitions reached new heights with the approval of the Chandrayaan-5 mission, announced by ISRO Chairman V. Narayanan. This mission will be executed in collaboration with Japan and aims to conduct an advanced study of the Moon's surface. Unlike Chandrayaan-3, which carried the 25 kg rover 'Pragyan', Chandrayaan-5 will deploy a heavier 250 kg rover, enhancing India's lunar exploration capabilities.
Mar 16, 2025
Fourth Form of Water Confirmed
Scientists confirmed a fourth form of ice, called Plastic Ice VII. This rare phase allows water molecules to rotate freely while staying in a solid structure. The discovery, led by Livia Bove from Sorbonne University, helps scientists understand how water behaves in extreme planetary environments.
This discovery changes our understanding of water in space. Ice VII, another extreme phase, exists on Jupiter's and Saturn's icy moons, such as Ganymede and Titan. The existence of Plastic Ice VII suggests that water behaves even more unpredictably in space.
Google Introduces New AI Models for Rapidly Growing Robotics Industry
Google launched two new AI models tailored for robotics applications based on its Gemini 2.0 model, as it looks to cater to the rapidly growing robotics industry.
Google's launch comes a month after robotics start-up Figure AI exited its collaboration agreement with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI after it made an internal breakthrough in AI for robots.
The search engine giant's Gemini Robotics is an advanced vision-language-action model that will have physical actions as a way to provide output.
The second model, named Gemini Robotics-ER, will enable a robot to have an advanced understanding of the space around it and lets developers run their own programs using reasoning abilities offered by Gemini 2.0.
Mar 15, 2025
ISRO Successfully Conducts De-docking of SpaDeX Satellites
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) confirmed the successful undocking of their Space Docking Experiment - SpaDex, setting the stage for future missions such as Chandrayaan-4 and more.
Mar 14, 2025
ScienceDirect AI: Elsevier Launches Generative AI Tool for Researchers
Dutch publishing company, Elsevier, that specialises in medical and scientific content launched ScienceDirect AI, a generative AI tool for researchers, the company announced, adding that it will enable researchers to instantly extract, summarise, and compare trusted insights from millions of full-text articles and book chapters on ScienceDirect.
ScienceDirect is world's largest platform for peer-reviewed research.
Mar 13, 2025
NASA Launches Missions to Study Sun
NASA launched four small satellites that make up the agency's PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission, to study how the Sun's outer atmosphere becomes the solar wind.
NASA's PUNCH will make global, 3D observations of the inner solar system and the Sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, to learn how its mass and energy become the solar wind, a stream of charged particles blowing outward from the Sun in all directions. The mission will explore the formation and evolution of space weather events such as coronal mass ejections, which can create storms of energetic particle radiation that can endanger spacecraft and astronauts.