General Awareness

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - March 2018

Mar 2018

Oct 24, 2020

Mars Losing its Atmosphere to Outer Space

Mars is losing its atmosphere to outer space at a faster rate, a study of data and images sent by ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) and NASA's Mars Orbiter Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (Maven) has found.
Mars, being relatively smaller planet compared to Earth, is losing its atmosphere at a faster rate.
Though other terrestrial planets in the solar system are also constantly losing their atmospheres to outer space, the rate at which this loss happens is determined mainly by the size of a planet and temperature of its upper atmosphere.

Asteroid Samples Escaping from Jammed NASA Spacecraft

A NASA spacecraft is stuffed with so much asteroid rubble from this week's grab that it's jammed open and precious particles are drifting away in space.
Scientists announced the news three days after the spacecraft named Osiris-Rex briefly touched asteroid Bennu, NASA's first attempt at such a mission.
The mission's lead scientist, Dante Lauretta, said that operation 200 million miles away collected far more material than expected for return to Earth — in the hundreds of grams.
The sample container on the end of the robot arm penetrated so deeply into the asteroid and with such force, however, that rocks got sucked in and became wedged around the rim of the lid.
Scientists estimate the sampler pressed as much as 48 centimeters into the rough, crumbly, black terrain.

Oct 23, 2020

Third Phase of National Supercomputing Mission

Department of Science and Technology announced that the third phase of National Supercomputing Mission will start by January 2021. The third phase of the mission is to increase computing speed to around 45 petaflops.
On October 12, 2020 the C-DAC and the National Supercomputing Mission signed agreement with the leading institutes of India. According to the agreement, manufacturing units and assembly units of super computers are to be established in the Premier Institutes of the country. This is considered as a major step towards Aatm Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan.
The mission is being implemented by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing C-DAC. It aims to empower the national academic Institutions and the research and development in the country to install supercomputing systems. The supercomputing grid is to be formed with more than 70 high performance computing facility. These supercomputers are to be networked under the National Knowledge network.
Under Phase 1 of the mission, the supercomputing speed of 6.6 petaflops was achieved. Under phase 2 of the mission, 8 more Institutions are to be equipped with supercomputing facilities by April 2021. Under phase 2, the mission is to attain a speed of 10 petaflops.

Oct 22, 2020

India-Nigeria Space Cooperation

The Union Cabinet approved the Memorandum of Understanding signed between the Indian Space Research Organisation and the National Space Research and Development agency of Nigeria.
The agreements were signed in June 2020 at Bengaluru and in August 2020 at Abuja Nigeria. The agreements enable cooperation between the countries in the areas such as
1. Satellite communication
2. Satellite based navigation
3. Remote Sensing of the earth
4. Space systems and ground systems
5. Practical applications of space technology
Under the agreement a joint working group is to be set up by drawing members from the national space research and development agency of Nigeria and the ISRO.
The agreement will provide impetus to explore new research activities. It will also help to explore possible applications in the field of remote sensing of the earth satellite, Navigation satellite, communication space science and Exploration of outer space.

Oct 21, 2020

OSIRIS-Rex Probe to Collect Samples from Asteroid Benu

The United States-based National Aeronautics and Space Administration launched OSIRIS-REx to the asteroid Bennu in 2016. The mission aimed to study Asteroid Bennu and return at least 60 grams of the sample.
After two years of circling, the satellite is to touch the asteroid. The spacecraft has three bottles of nitrogen. This means that it can touch down the asteroid thrice.
The asteroid Bennu is a potentially hazardous object which has a 1 in 2700 chance of hitting the Earth in the year 2175 and 2199.
The asteroid has a mean diameter of 492 meters, has a roughly round shape and is under continuous observation by the various observatories of the Earth.
The impact of Bennu on Earth is likely to cause widespread death in the side facing the impact and destruction all over the Earth with potentially human-extinction level incidents.
The OSIRIS-REx (short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer) is a spacecraft which was launched by NASA aboard an Atlas V rocket.

NATO to Set Up New Space Centre

The North Atlantic Treaty organisation is to setup a new Space Centre in Ramstein, Germany. The centre is to serve as a co-ordination Centre for space observation.
The new Centre will gather information about possible threats to satellites. The centre is to be developed into a command centre of defensive measures in near future. The centre is being setup based on Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty organisation.
The article empowers the organisation to take collective defence action. It provides criteria under which NATO can take defensive measures.
Article 5 has been invoked by NATO in situations such as Syrian crisis, Russia-Ukraine crisis and 26/11 attack on US.

Oct 19, 2020

Prithvi-2 Missile Blasts off from Odisha in User Trial

India successfully conducted another night trial of its nuclear-capable Prithvi-2 missile as part of a user trial for the armed forces from a test range in Odisha coast. User trial was carried out by the Strategic Force Command.
The liquid-propelled Prithvi-2 has a range of 250 km and can carry a 1 tonne warhead. The 9-metre tall missile is the first to have been developed by DRDO under the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme. It is India's first indigenous surface-to-surface strategic missile.
The trajectory of the missiles was tracked by a battery of long-range, multi-function radars and electro-optic telemetry stations at different locations.

Soyuz Rocket Departs for the International Space Station in Historic Final U.S.-Russian Flight

Since the launch of Sputnik and Yury Gagarin from the desert of Kazakhstan over 60 years ago, the history of spaceflight has been measured in milestones.
The first satellite, the first human in space, the first to the Moon. But the launch of Soyuz MS-17 was a different kind of milestone: the end of an era.
A Soyuz rocket blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Russia's sprawling and remote space launch facility in Kazakhstan, to the International Space Station.
It was the last time NASA paid for an American astronaut to fly with the Russian Space Agency, Roscosmos, on such a flight. Next year, for the first time since the start of the ISS program 20 years ago, Russia will fly all-Russian crews on Soyuz.

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