General Awareness

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - December 2018

Dec 2018

May 15, 2023

NASA Launches the Second Super Pressure Balloon

NASA launched another stadium-sized super pressure balloon from Wānaka Airport, the second of two planned launches for the year.
The first scientific balloon was launched on April 16, following five failed attempts last year (2022).
Airways, New Zealand's air navigation services provider, works with NASA to plan the launches of the balloons, which inflate fully in flight to 532,000 cubic meters - about the size of Dunedin's Forsyth Barr Stadium - and carry a scientific payload of over two tonnes.
The second balloon carries a University of Chicago instrument to detect ultra-high-energy cosmic ray particles from beyond our galaxy.

May 13, 2023

ISRO Successfully Initiates Maiden Test of Semi-cryo Engine Power Head

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) initiated the series of tests required for qualifying and validating its most-powerful liquid-fuelled engine yet, one that is powered by special refined kerosene (dubbed as 'ISROsene') and super-cooled liquid oxygen. Once ready, this 2000kN engine and its stage(associated components, fuel tanks etc.) will be replacing the current L110(core stage) of India's largest rocket - Launch Vehicle Mark 3(LVM3). This is meant to significantly add to the lifting power of the LVM3 rocket.

May 12, 2023

Google's Bard Chatbot to Launch Globally, Including India

Search giant Google opened up access to its ChatGPT rival chatbot Bard to more than 180 countries, while also removing a waitlist that was required for access. Google also added a number of new features to Bard in a bid to take control of the AI chatbot landscape, currently dominated by OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Bard will be available in Japanese and Korean, while the company is preparing to add support for 40 more languages soon. Bard is now powered by Google's latest large language model (LLM), PaLM 2. The switch to the PaLM2 language model has enabled recent improvements in Bard, including coding capabilities, advanced math and reasoning skills, and more.
Notably, Bard was initially only available to users in the US and UK via a waitlist. The chatbot is now available in more than 180 countries and territories, and Google promises to add support for more countries soon. However, Bard is still in the beta stage and, like other generative AI-based chatbots, is prone to making mistakes and 'hallucinating'.

May 10, 2023

BITS Pilani Students' Human Rover Bags Top Prize at NASA Challenge

A human-powered rover developed for manned explorations on the Moon and Mars by students at BITS Pilani bagged the top prize in NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge (HERC).
The event was held at NASA Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama, USA.
The competition's goal was to create a human-powered Mars Rover capable of navigating a difficult and harsh obstacle course meticulously built to resemble Martian terrain.
The team "Inspired Karters Gravity" secured the top position for the Project Review Award at the competition.
The team's rover "G-Rover lll" stood out from the competition due to a few distinctive features like generative design, 3-D printed wheels, electronically-actuated steering system, leaning suspension setup and 3-wheeled aluminium chassis.

Accenture Tops Everest Annual ITS Rankings for Seventh Consecutive Year

Global IT research firm Everest Group released its annual PEAK Matrix Service Provider of the Year Awards for Information Technology (IT) services. The rankings recognise large IT service providers with over $2 billion in annual revenue who have demonstrated superior capabilities and service strategies.
For the seventh year in a row, Accenture secured the number one spot in the rankings, followed by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Capgemini, Wipro, and HCLTech. TCS climbed to second place, while Capgemini and Wipro each rose three positions in the rankings over last year.
The ITS rankings also recognise Star Performers of the Year, who achieved the greatest positive relative year-on-year movement on the PEAK Matrix assessment. This year's Star Performers include LTIMindtree, TCS, Capgemini, and HCLTech.
The Top 3 ITS Challengers in the 2023 awards are Mphasis, Virtusa, and Zensar. Zensar is also recognised as the Top ITS Challenger Star Performer for achieving the greatest cumulative upward mobility within the Top ITS Challengers list.

May 09, 2023

Rocket Lab Launches Two Small NASA Satellites to Monitor Tropical Storms

Rocket Lab launched two toaster-size satellites for NASA, the first of four "cubesats" designed to provide hourly updates of typhoon and hurricane development in a bid to improve forecasting and provide new insights into how tropical storms evolve and intensify.
The TROPICS mission aims to improve the scientific understanding by obtaining microwave observations that allow seeing the inner structure of these storms approximately hourly.
These observations will complement the existing weather satellites, and ultimately then can be tied to the broader understanding of the entire earth system.
TROPICS, one of NASA's more convoluted acronyms, stands for Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation Structure and Storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats. The bargain-basement $30 million mission takes advantage of miniaturized electronics and the evolution of cubesats capable of taking on big-ticket science.
The cubesats aren't intended to replace larger, much more powerful and much more expensive weather satellites. But they offer a low-cost way to augment those "flagship" missions with complementary science and much shorter development times.

China's 'Mystery' Spacecraft Returns to Earth after 276 Days

An experimental Chinese spacecraft returned to Earth after staying in orbit for 276 days, completing a landmark mission to test the country's reusable space technologies.
The uncrewed spacecraft returned to the Jiuquan launch centre in north-west China as scheduled.
No details were given on what the spacecraft was, what technologies were tested, how high it flew, and where its orbits had taken it since its launch in early August 2022.

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