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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - December 2018

Dec 2018

Jul 23, 2020

China's Tianwen-1 Mars Rover Rockets Away from Earth

China launched its first rover mission to Mars.
The six-wheeled robot, encapsulated in a protective probe, was lifted off Earth by a Long March 5 rocket from the Wenchang spaceport on Hainan Island.
It should arrive in orbit around the Red Planet in February.
Called Tianwen-1, or "Questions to Heaven", the rover won't actually try to land on the surface for a further two to three months.
This wait-and-see strategy was used successfully by the American Viking landers in the 1970s. It will allow engineers to assess the atmospheric conditions on Mars before attempting what will be a hazardous descent.
Tianwen-1 is one of three missions setting off to Mars in the space of 11 days.
On Monday, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) launched its Hope satellite towards the Red Planet. And in a week from now, the US space agency (NASA) aims to despatch its next-generation rover, Perseverance.

Jul 22, 2020

South Korea Launches 1st Military Communications Satellite, ANASIS-II

South Korea launched its first military communications satellite, Army/Navy/Air Force Satellite Information System II (ANASIS-II). The satellite was deployed into a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) by a Falcon 9 rocket developed by US space firm SpaceX. It lifted off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in the US state of Florida.
With this launch South Korea has become the 10th country to own a military-only communications satellite, which will provide permanent and secured military communications.
ANASIS-II is SpaceX's 1st geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) mission of 2020.

Jul 20, 2020

UAE Launches 'Hope' Mission to Mars

The United Arab Emirates launched its first-ever interplanetary 'Hope' probe mission to Mars from Japan's Tanegashima Space Centre.
The spacecraft is expected to reach Mars orbit in about 200 days from now and then begin its mission to study the Red Planet`s atmosphere. Once it enters Mars` orbit in the first quarter of 2021, the Hope probe will mark the UAE`s 50th anniversary.
The Hope probe will be the first to study the Martian climate throughout daily and seasonal cycles.

ICAT Launches Automotive Technology E-portal ASPIRE

The International Centre of Automotive Technology (ICAT) launched an automotive technology e-portal, Automotive Solutions Portal for Industry, Research and Education (ASPIRE). The key objective of this portal is to enhance the technological capability of Indian automotive sector through exchange of knowledge and expertise.
It was launched to facilitate the initiative of the Department of Heavy Industry (DHI), Govt. of India to promote, R&D and product development in India for various sectors.
In Regard to this, 5 other portals are being developed for specific sectors by different organisations namely:
Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) for power sector equipment, HMT (formerly Hindustan Machine Tools Limited) for machine tools, CMFTI for manufacturing technology, ICAT and Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) for the automotive sector.

Jul 19, 2020

Cocooned Black Holes Found Hiding in Plain Sight

More than two dozen missing cocooned black holes have been rediscovered, after researchers took a new look at X-ray maps of the sky. All of these singularities had been misclassified as distant galaxies or other types of black holes.
All 28 of the objects are supermassive black holes, billions of times the mass of our sun. And all are going through a stage of development where they shroud themselves in a dark bubble of dust and other material. Those cocoons obscure the bright X-rays emitted by hot material swirling around their event horizons, the point of no return for infalling matter, making them seem dimmer than they really are. Models of black hole formation suggest there should be lots of black holes like this across the sky, but until now, scientists hadn't spotted as many as expected. This new research, based on observations of one patch of the southern sky, suggests many of them were hiding in plain sight.

Jul 15, 2020

New Physical Paradox Discovered by Russian Scientists: "Ballistic Resonance"

Researchers from Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU) discovered and theoretically explained a new physical effect: amplitude of mechanical vibrations can grow without external influence. Additionally, the scientific group offered their explanation on how to eliminate the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou paradox.
The scientists of SPbPU explained it using a simple example: to rock the swing, you have to keep pushing it. It is generally believed that it is impossible to achieve oscillatory resonance without constant external influence.
However, the scientific group of the Higher School of Theoretical Mechanics, Institute of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics SPbPU discovered a new physical phenomenon of "ballistic resonance," where mechanical oscillations can be excited only due to internal thermal resources of the system.
The experimental work of researchers from all around the world demonstrated, that the heat spreads at abnormally high speeds at nano and micro levels in ultrapure crystalline materials. This phenomenon was called ballistic heat conductivity.

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