General Awareness

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - December 2018

Dec 2018

Mar 15, 2022

ISRO Successfully Conducts Ground Test of Solid Booster Stage for SSLV

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully completed the ground test of the solid-fuel based booster stage (SS1) of its new Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV), completing the ground testing of all three stages of the launch vehicle. The new launch vehicle is now ready for its first development flight, which is scheduled for May 2022.
The SSLV was designed to be smaller, cheaper, and quickly assembled for commercial launches on demand. The SSLV is likely to cost Rs. 30 crore as compared to Rs. 120 crore for each Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), which is India's workhorse. It can be assembled by a team of six within seven days in comparison to a team of 600 that takes a couple of months to assemble a PSLV.
The launch vehicle will carry smaller payloads of about 500 kg in comparison to 1,750 kg carried by PSLV.

Mar 14, 2022

Aerospace Start-up Unveils Rover to Carry Astronauts to Moon, Mars

US-based aerospace start-up Venturi Astrolab unveiled a prototype of an interplanetary rover that is designed to transport cargo and people across the surface of the Moon - and eventually, Mars one day.
Called FLEX, for Flexible Logistics and Exploration, the truck-sized rover can crouch down and lift payloads up from the surface of the Moon, carrying them under its belly before depositing them at their intended location.
The rover can manoeuvre semi-autonomously, be controlled remotely - or it can even be modified to include a crew interface, allowing astronauts to ride on the rover while guiding it through lunar terrain.

Mar 12, 2022

ESA Vigil

The European Space Agency's (ESA) Vigil mission, formerly known as Lagrange, is a planned solar weather mission. Under this mission, two spacecraft would be stationed at the Lagrangian points L1 and L5, respectively.
It's the first of its kind mission, with the aim of monitoring the unpredictable and active Sun and help protect the Earth from its outbursts.
Solar flares, coronal mass ejections, geomagnetic storms, solar proton events, and other space weather incidences will be monitored by ESA Vigil.
This mission plans to position two spacecraft in the L1 and L5 Lagrangian points, where gravitational forces interact to provide a stable region where propellant may be saved and observations can be made. Since L1 is located in the solar wind 'upstream' from Earth measurements at the L1 will provide information about the space weather approaching Earth. The L5 point, on the other hand, allows the tracking of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the side in order to assess their speed and direction.

Mar 10, 2022

Google Cloud and Flipkart Enter a Strategic Partnership

Google Cloud and e-commerce firm Flipkart, entered into a multi-year strategic partnership to help fast-track Flipkart's innovation and cloud strategy. The partnership would propel Flipkart into its next phase of growth and advance its vision of onboarding India's next 200 million shoppers and lakhs of sellers.
The strategic alliance with Google Cloud would enable Flipkart to accelerate our digital transformation, power productivity and advance our innovation agenda.
By leveraging Google Cloud's secure and scalable global infrastructure and advanced networking technologies, Flipkart would be able to deliver robust app access and performance even during peak purchase seasons with heightened traffic. Flipkart will also continue to advance the pace of new product development by building on Google Cloud, furthering its expansion into Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets in India.

Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter Makes New Discovery about Distribution of Gas in Moon's Atmosphere

India's Chandrayaan-2 orbiter made new observations about the distribution of an important gas in the moon's upper atmosphere, which can offer new insights into the lunar surroundings.
New data from Chandra's Atmospheric Composition Explorer-2 (CHACE-2) mass spectrometer on Chandrayaan-2 show the distribution of Argon-40 gas in the lunar 'exosphere', beyond the areas this was known to exist.
Though, Argon-40 (Ar-40) is known to exist in the lunar exosphere, the knowledge on its distribution at higher latitudes is lacking. For the first time, Chandra's Atmospheric Composition Explorer-2 experiment aboard Chandrayaan-2 orbiter has continuously observed Ar-40 in latitude range of -60 to +60 degrees.

Mar 09, 2022

Astronomers Detect Largest Organic Molecule ever Found in a Stellar 'Dust Trap'

Astronomers detected the largest organic molecule ever seen in a cloud of planet-forming dust, potentially offering new insights into the way that the building blocks of life end up on planets.
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile, researchers studied the light emitted by different molecules in the lopsided ring of dust and ice surrounding the young star IRS 48, located about 444 light-years from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus.
Within the dusty ring, the researchers saw clear traces of an organic compound called dimethyl ether — a large molecule that's commonly detected in stellar nurseries (cold, dusty regions of space where new stars form) and is a precursor to crucial building blocks of life, such as amino acids and sugars.

Engineers Begin Assembly of NASA's Europa Clipper

NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft will conduct detailed reconnaissance of Jupiter's moon Europa to see whether the icy moon could harbor conditions suitable for life, honing our insights into astrobiology.
Europa Clipper would orbit Jupiter about every two weeks, providing many opportunities for close flybys of Europa.
In total, the solar-powered orbiter would perform 45 flybys at altitudes ranging from 25 to 2,700 km (16 to 1,700 miles), imaging the moon's icy surface at high resolution and investigating its composition and the structure of its interior and icy shell.
When it's fully assembled, Europa Clipper will be as large as an SUV with solar arrays long enough to span a basketball court.

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