General Awareness

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - January 2019

Jan 2019

Feb 16, 2022

IXPE Space Observatory Collects Its First Imaging Data

The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE), an international collaboration between NASA and the Italian Space Agency (ASI), captured an image of Cassiopeia A, the youngest known supernova remnant in our Milky Way Galaxy.
IXPE is NASA's first mission dedicated to measuring the polarization of X-rays from the most extreme and mysterious objects in the Universe: supernova remnants, supermassive black holes, and dozens of other high-energy objects.
The observatory launched December 9, 2021 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
It now orbits 600 km (370 miles) above Earth's equator.
IXPE builds on and complements the scientific discoveries of other telescopes, including NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.

Feb 15, 2022

In a first, Taiwan Researchers Become Part of Satellite Launch Mission by ISRO

In a first, India's space research organization or ISRO launched a satellite jointly developed by a team of international researchers including from Taiwan. INSPIRESat-1 satellite wasa developed by scientists from universities of the US, Taiwan, India, and Singapore.
The universities are--University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST), Taiwan's National Central University (NCU), and Singapore' Nanyang Technological University. INSPIRESat-1 stands for International Research and Teaching Satellite Project satellite one.
The satellite will provide information on Sun's corona and its impact on Earth's ionosphere.

India's Tech Spending to Grow 8.7% in 2022, Highest in Asia-Pacific

According to a new report, the tech spending in India is likely to grow 8.7 per cent in 2022, one of the highest growth rates in the Asia Pacific region.
Although the second wave of Covid-19 dampened the pace of India's recovery in early 2021, economic activity picked up in the second half of the year thanks to a sharp drop in case numbers and progress made on vaccination.

Feb 14, 2022

NASA's New Space Telescope Sees 1st Starlight

NASA's new space telescope captured its first starlight and even took a selfie of its giant, gold mirror.
All 18 segments of the primary mirror on the James Webb Space Telescope seem to be working properly one and half months into the mission.
The telescope's first target was a bright star 258 light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major.
Over the next few months, the hexagonal mirror segments — each the size of a coffee table — will be aligned and focused as one, allowing science observations to begin by the end of June.

ISRO Successfully Launches Earth Observation Satellite, Two other Co-passengers on PSLV-C52

The Indian Space & Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully launched the Earth Observation Satellite (EOS-04) onboard the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. The launch carried two other rideshare satellites into orbit.
The launch was conducted from SAR in Sriharikota to deploy EOS-04 in the Sun-Synchronous Orbit nearly 529 kilometers above the planet. The four-stage rocket lifted off with a student satellite INSPIRESat and a spacecraft dubbed INSAT-2DT that is a precursor of a joint India-Bhutan mission in the future.
The Earth Observation Satellite-04 is also called Radar Imaging Satellite (RISAT) that has been designed to provide high-quality images under all weather conditions for applications such as agriculture, forestry, and plantations, flood mapping, soil moisture & hydrology.

NASA Captures Stunning, First of a Kind Images of Venus' Surface

Stunning images snapped by NASA's Parker Solar Probe have given the very first visible light glimpse of Venus' red-hot surface, revealing continents, plains and plateaus on the inhospitable volcanic world.
Peering beneath the thick and toxic Venusian clouds with the Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe (WISPR) instrument, NASA scientists spotted a bevy of geological features lit up in the faint glow of Venus' nightside surface, alongside a luminescent halo of oxygen in the planet's atmosphere.
The groundbreaking images, taken during the Parker Solar Probe's fourth flyby of Venus on the way to the sun, will give scientists valuable insights into the scorching planet's geology and minerals, and they could reveal more about how Venus became so inhospitable while life on Earth flourished.

Feb 13, 2022

Two Protoclusters of Galaxies Spotted in Early Universe

Each of the two newly-discovered protoclusters, MAGAZ3NE J095924+022537 and MAGAZ3NE J100028+023349, hosts an ultramassive galaxy — the progenitor of brightest cluster galaxies seen in modern-day massive galaxy clusters — in its center. Notably, and in marked contrast to previously discovered protoclusters, MAGAZ3NE J0959 contains a high fraction of quiescent galaxies.
Galaxy clusters grow over time under gravity and, in the present-day Universe, can contain hundreds or even thousands of galaxies, as well as hot gas and dark matter.
As time goes by, their galaxies burn through the fuel available and evolve from vigorously star-forming galaxies into red and dead galaxies.

Feb 12, 2022

AI-based Tool to Find Habitable Planets

Astronomers from Indian Institute of Astrophysics developed a new way to identify potentially habitable planets, with a high probability.
Astronomers developed this new way in association with astronomers from BITS Pilani, Goa campus.
They used an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based algorithm for this, where 60 potentially habitable planets were found out of 5,000 known planets.
The new AI-based method is named as "Multi-Stage Memetic Binary Tree Anomaly Identifier (MSMBTAI)". This method is based on a novel multi-stage memetic algorithm (MSMA), which uses generic notion of a meme. Meme is a knowledge or idea that gets transferred from one person to another by imitation. This method was devised on the basis of a belief that Earth is an anomaly, with possibility of existence of more anomalies among thousands of data point. There are 60 potentially habitable planets out of 5000 confirmed and 8000 candidate planets proposed. The assessment was done on the basis of their close similarity to Earth. These planets can be regarded as candidates for anomalous instances in huge pool of non-habitable' exoplanets.

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