Asia's Largest 4-metre Liquid Mirror Telescope Inaugurated in Uttarakhand
Asia's largest 4-meter International Liquid Mirror Telescope was launched in Devasthal in Uttarakhand. The observatory will explore the deep celestial sky, classifying objects from asteroids to supernovae, and space debris.
The telescope was inaugurated by Science & Technology minister Jitendra Singh, who said that the inauguration of the observatory places India at a different and much higher level of ability to study the mysteries of the skies and astronomy and to share the same with the rest of the world.
The International Liquid Mirror Telescope has a 4-meter-diameter rotating mirror made up of a thin layer of liquid mercury to collect and focus light. The metal mercury is in liquid form at room temperature, which is highly reflective and designed to survey the strip of the sky passing overhead each night.
The telescope was designed and built by the Advanced Mechanical and Optical Systems (AMOS) Corporation and the Centre Spatial de Lie'ge in Belgium.
Mar 21, 2023
ISRO Organises Young Scientist Programme "YUVIKA" for Students
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) organised a special programme for school children called "YUva VIgyani KAryakram" (YUVIKA) or "Young Scientist Programme". Aimed at creating awareness about emerging trends in science and technology, this programme is expected to encourage more students to pursue research and a career in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).
The YUVIKA programme was first introduced by the former ISRO chief K. Sivan in January 2019, and it was launched four months later in May 2019. During the programme inception, Sivan had said that the programme was aimed to inculcate and nurture space research interest in young minds and that students from rural backgrounds would be given preference in selection criteria.
The YUVIKA Programme will be held from May 15 to 16, 2023.
Mar 20, 2023
Svaya Robotics Unveils India's First Homegrown quadruped Robot and Exoskeleton
Svaya Robotics, a Hyderabad-based company, partnered with two DRDO labs, the Research and Development Establishment in Pune (R&DE) and Defence Bio-engineering & Electro Medical Laboratory in Bengaluru (DEBEL), to create India's first quadruped robot and wearable exo-skeleton. The company designed both robots to serve multiple purposes in industries and healthcare, and they are dual-use robots.
Quadruped robots are four-legged robots that can walk or run on uneven and rough terrains.
The robots can carry 25 kg in payload and walk along with the soldier.
It is made for navigating in unstructured terrains to provide remote reconnaissance and inspection, which otherwise are not safe for humans to operate in.
Exoskeleton is developed to suit Indian soldiers' anthropometry and augment soldier strength for walking long distances.
These active exoskeletons, when worn by soldiers, can carry heavy loads without expending much effort.
Mar 19, 2023
Chandrayaan-3 Spacecraft Capable of Handling Harsh Launch Conditions
India's national space agency ISRO reached a new milestone in the pursuit of a soft landing on the Moon, with the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft having successfully completed "the essential tests" that validated its capability to withstand the harsh vibration and acoustic environment that the spacecraft would face during its launch.
The tests were conducted in the facilities located at U. R. Rao Satellite Centre, Bengaluru.
These tests are an essential part of the qualification and acceptance process for any spacecraft.
The vibration and acoustic tests carried out on the integrated spacecraft have provided sufficient confidence about its structural integrity and survivability in the launch environment.
Mar 18, 2023
OpenAI Launches 'GPT-4' with Higher Accuracy
OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research company behind ChatGPT, unveiled its new and more advanced model called GPT-4. The latest version is more creative and accurate in its response and has better problem-solving capabilities than ChatGPT.
According to OpenAI, GPT-4 is a "large multimodal model", which cannot outperform humans in real-world scenarios but can exhibit "human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks".
OpenAI describes GPT-4 as its "most advanced system" which produces safer and more useful responses.
Unlike ChatGPT, GPT-4 can accept both text and images as inputs. It means that the AI system can generate a response to an image or inputs consisting of interspersed images and text. The new feature can be used to get captions for photos while users can also ask the model to describe or recognise a picture for them.