General Awareness

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - January 2019

Jan 2019

Apr 29, 2021

China Launches First Module of New Space Station

China has launched a key module of a new permanent space station, the latest in Beijing's increasingly ambitious space program.
The Tianhe module - which contains living quarters for crew members - was launched from the Wenchang Space Launch Centre on a Long March-5B rocket.
China hopes to have the new station operational by 2022.
The only space station currently in orbit is the International Space Station, from which China is excluded.
China has been a late starter when it comes to space exploration. It was only in 2003 that it sent its first astronaut into orbit, making it the third country to do so, after the Soviet Union and the US.

Apr 28, 2021

Jeff Bezos' Rocket Company Challenges NASA

Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, two of the richest men in the world, both with dreams of leading humanity out into the solar system, are fighting over the moon.
Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Mr. Bezos filed a 50-page protest with the federal Government Accountability Office, challenging a $2.9 billion contract to SpaceX from NASA to build a lander for American astronauts to return to the moon.
NASA announced this month that Mr. Musk's SpaceX was the sole winner in the competition, beating Blue Origin and a third company, Dynetics of Huntsville, Ala., a defense contractor.
The dispute highlights that whatever the outsize ambitions of Mr. Musk and Mr. Bezos for the future, the present fortunes of their space companies and the ability to generate the profits needed to pay for their grandiose dreams depend on mundane business concerns like jousting for government contracts.
Bob Smith, chief executive of Blue Origin, said NASA's decision was based on flawed evaluations of the bids — misjudging advantages of Blue Origin's proposal and downplaying technical challenges in SpaceX's. He also said that NASA had placed a bigger emphasis on bottom-line cost than it said it would.

Apr 26, 2021

China's first Mars Rover Named 'Zhurong'

China's first Mars rover will be named Zhurong after a traditional fire god.
The rover is aboard the Tianwen-1 probe that arrived in Mars orbit on February 24 and is due to land in May to look for evidence of life.
It is part of Chinese space plans that include launching a crewed orbital station and landing a human on the moon. China in 2019 became the first country to land a space probe on the little-explored far side of the moon and in December returned lunar rocks to Earth for the first time since the 1970s.
The rover's title fits with the Chinese name for Mars — "Huo Xing," or fire star, the China National Space Administration said.
The name "signifies igniting the flame of China's planetary exploration," a deputy CNSA administrator, Wu Yanhua, was cited by the official Xinhua News Agency as saying.

Nasa's Mars Helicopter makes it Three from Three

The US space agency's Ingenuity Mars helicopter has now made its third successful flight on the Red Planet.
The little chopper rose to a height of 5m before speeding off laterally for 50m - half the length of a football field.
Ingenuity then came back to its take-off spot, for a total flight time of 80 seconds.
This sortie was the most ambitious yet, but engineers say they plan to push the technology harder still.
They want to find the chopper's limits, even if that means crashing it in the process.

Apr 24, 2021

Small NASA Rocket Will Study Boundary of Interstellar Space

For a few brief minutes, a suborbital rocket from NASA has an ambitious plan to seek out particles from interstellar space.
A mission called Spatial Heterodyne Interferometric Emission Line Dynamics Spectrometer (SHIELDS) will lift off from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico no earlier than Monday (April 19). It will soar to a peak height of 186 miles (roughly 300 kilometers) — a little more than half the altitude of the International Space Station — and peer at the sky for a few minutes with its telescope.
With this capability, it is possible to see light from particles from beyond our solar system even on a short flight outside the Earth's atmosphere. The mission follows a similar study in 2014; this mission will extend the project's scope.

Apr 23, 2021

Russia Wants to Build its Own Space Station to Replace the ISS

The 23-year partnership between the United States and Russia that has kept the International Space Station (ISS) in orbit could soon come to an end, Russian officials suggested this week.
Yury Borisov, the Russian Deputy Prime Minister, reportedly said in a government meeting that the nation might withdraw from the ISS in 2025. Borisov cited the deteriorating condition of the space station, which was launched in 1998 by NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos, as the primary reason for the potential departure.

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