General Awareness

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY - August 2019

Aug 2019

Aug 21, 2020

Chandrayaan-2 Completes a Year Around Moon

Space agency ISRO said that India's second lunar mission Chandrayaan-2 completed one year in orbit around the moon on August 20 and all instruments are currently performing well and there is adequate onboard fuel to keep it operational for about seven more years. Chandrayaan-2 was launched on July 22, 2019 and inserted into the lunar orbit on August 20, exactly one year ago. The Indian Space Research Organisation said, 'Though the soft-landing attempt (of the lander carrying the rover) was not successful, the orbiter, which was equipped with eight scientific instruments, was successfully placed in the lunar orbit. The orbiter completed more than 4,400 orbits around the Moon and all the instruments are currently performing well.' The agency in a statement said the spacecraft was healthy and the performance of subsystems normal.

Aug 18, 2020

Astronomers Spot a Milky Way Look-alike Galaxy

Astronomers discovered the most distant look-alike galaxy of our Milky Way. The discovery was done with the help of Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA Radio Telescope) located in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. The extremely distant galaxy called SPT0418-47 is 12 billion light-years away from us. This means that the Milky Way galaxy look-alike that astronomers spotted was like this 12 billion years ago. On the other hand, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) believes that our universe is around 13 billion years – give or take a few billion which makes the discovery more fascinating.
Astronomers were surprised to see SPT0418-47 have two similar features as our galaxy. They did not expect it to be organised enough to have disks and bulges. Instead, they expected it to have "turbulent and unstable" features. The SPT0418-47 has a rotating flat disk similar to our galaxy and a galactic bulge which shows a large group of stars in close proximity towards the centre.
This unexpected discovery challenges our understanding of how galaxies form, giving new insights into the past of our universe.

Aug 17, 2020

Chandrayaan-2 Captures Image of Crater on Moon

Chandryaan-2 has captured images of the Moon and one of the craters has been named after Vikram Sarabhai, the father of the Indian space programme.
As per Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office Jitendra Singh, the recent achievements of the ISRO, which have placed India as a frontline nation of the world, is a vindication of Sarabhai's visionary dream.
The Department of Space directly comes under the Prime Minister's Office.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has sought to pay tribute to him in a special way by announcing that Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter has captured the Moon images of 'Sarabhai Crater.
The Sarabhai Crater is around 250 to 300 kilometres east of the crater where the Apollo 17 and Luna 21 Missions had landed.

Aug 16, 2020

Pentagon to Set Up New Unit to Investigate UFOs

As per reports, the Pentagon is forming a new task force to investigate UFOs that have been observed by US military aircraft.
Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist will help oversee the task force, which is expected to be officially unveiled in the next few days. Previous efforts to look into what the Pentagon dubs unidentified aerial phenomena were led by the US Navy as many of the documented encounters involved their aircraft.
Members of Congress and Pentagon officials have long expressed concerns about the appearance of the unidentified aircraft that have flown over US military bases, posing a risk to military jets. There is no consensus on their origin with some believing they may be drones potentially operated by earthly adversaries seeking to gather intelligence rather than extraterrestrials.
The Senate Intelligence Committee voted in June to have the Pentagon and intelligence community provide a public analysis of the encounters, following the official Pentagon release of three short videos showing US aircraft encountering these phenomena.

Aug 15, 2020

IIA Discovers He-enhanced Star among Omega Centauri

Indian Scientist from Indian Institute of Aerophysics (IIA), Bengaluru, Karnataka, an autonomous institute under the Department of Science and Technology (DST) discovered a helium (He)-enhanced cool bright star among metal rich samples of the globular cluster, Omega Centauri.
This study, a result of the spectroscopic survey conducted of the cluster, which determines the helium (He) abundance of these stars.
This is the first ever spectroscopic determination of He-abundance in the Omega Centauri.
The study was published in "The Astrophysical Journal".
The team started the study with the low-resolution spectra obtained from the Optometric Medium Resolution Spectrograph (OMRS) with the Vainu Bappu Telescope at Vainu Bappu Observatory, Kavalur, Tamil Nadu.
v.Dr Hema BP and Prof Gajendra Pandey of IIA worked in association with international researchers to measure the amount of He in the star, using the high-resolution spectra obtained from the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT).
The study gave the important clue for the origin of the He-enhanced population.
This establishes that these are the second generation stars formed from the metal-rich and He-enhanced material from the first generation stars.

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