Science

Space has always intrigued humans. While many exploration missions have hitherto focussed on our neighbours like the Moon and Mars, US space agency NASA is taking the game a notch higher with its latest launch. NASA is daring to send one of its spacecraft to a place in the dark alleys of the outer solar

Virgin Galactic said on Thursday it is delaying its commercial space travel service to the fourth quarter of 2022 and will not conduct another planned test flight this year. Virgin Galactic said “commercial service is now expected to commence in Q4 2022.” Shares in the company fell 13 percent in afterhours trading. The US Federal

Maintenance of the International Space Station (ISS) can become hectic for astronauts. So, NASA has devised a way to help astronauts with their chores. Astrobee, a free-flying robotic system assistant, is NASA’s new addition onboard the ISS. The purpose of this robot is to undertake routine tasks so that astronauts have ample time to spare

Mars is quite similar to Earth, as per a NASA scientist. In a video interview, astrobiologoist Dr. Becky McCauley Rench said that the Red Planet wasn’t as dry always, as we see it today. As per NASA’s own website, “Mars, like Earth, has seasons, polar ice caps, volcanoes, canyons, and weather.” Signs of ancient floods

A team of researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have come up with a bipedal robot that performs the twin function of walking and flying. The team claims that their latest creation is not just agile but also capable of complex movements. Named Leonardo, the part-walking robot, part-flying drone is built in such

Having made a career out of playing an explorer of the cosmos, William Shatner – Captain James Kirk of Star Trek fame – did it for real on Wednesday, becoming at age 90 the oldest person in space aboard a rocketship flown by billionaire Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin, an experience the actor called profound. Shatner

A moderately strong solar storm hit Earth recently and created a spectacular light show that was visible from New York. This event took place as Earth entered a period of heightened solar activity. On October 11, a massive solar flare was spotted on the Earth-facing side of the Sun and it reached the planet on

Jeff Bezos-founded Blue Origin is set to take William Shatner of Star Trek fame to space and back safely on October 13. Though the launch was pushed back by a day due to anticipated winds in Texas, it isn’t holding Shatner’s fans back from gearing up for the liftoff. Late last week, a user tweeted

Inside a huge crater in Israel’s sun-baked Negev desert, a team wearing space suits ventures forth on a mission to simulate conditions on Mars. The Austrian Space Forum has set up a pretend Martian base with the Israeli space agency at Makhtesh Ramon, a 1,600 feet (500m) deep, 25 miles (40km) wide crater. The six

Singapore now has robots on its streets to carry out safety-related surveillance of citizens. The patrol robots, named Xavier, have been programmed to roam around the streets of Singapore and detect “undesirable social behaviour.” The robots move amidst people on regular pathways. They have been fitted with seven cameras to detect any anomaly in proper

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday launched Indian Space Association (ISpA), an industry body aspiring to be the voice of the country’s space sector, and underlined his dispensation”s commitment to reforms, saying the country never had a more decisive government. PM Modi cited the government’s success in privatising loss-making public airline Air India to assert that

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will virtually launch the Indian Space Association (ISpA) at 11 am on Monday. He will also interact with representatives of the space industry on the occasion. Taking to Twitter, the Prime Minister on Sunday wrote, “At 11am tomorrow, 11th October, I will join the programme to launch the Indian Space Association. I

Remnants of solidified lava brought back by a Chinese mission were 1 billion years younger than material acquired by other missions decades ago, according to an article in the journal Science, suggesting the moon cooled down later than thought. Samples brought back from US and Soviet missions were more than 2.9 billion years old. The

Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk is in for a ride. The valuation of his space exploration company has reportedly skyrocketed to over $100 billion (Rs. 75,30,000 crores) following a secondary-share sale last week. SpaceX investors sold up to $755 million (Rs. 5,685 crores) in privately held stock at the price of $560 (Rs. 42,171) a share,

Germany’s Benjamin List and David MacMillan of the United States on Wednesday won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their development of a precise new tool for molecular construction, the jury said. The duo was awarded “for their development of a precise new tool for molecular construction: organocatalysis. This has had a great impact on

NASA will launch a mission this November to strike an asteroid that may pose a threat to Earth. NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission will be launched in order to prevent a hazardous asteroid from striking Earth. The mission is set to launch at 10:20pm PST, November 23 (10:50am IST on the following day).

A Russian crew of two cosmonauts, a movie director, and an actress blasted off for the International Space Station (ISS) on Tuesday to shoot the first movie in space, the latest twist in decades of Russia-US space rivalry. The Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft is set to dock at 12:12 GMT (5:42pm IST) at the station, which orbits

US-Japanese scientist Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann of Germany, and Giorgio Parisi of Italy on Tuesday won the Nobel Physics Prize for climate models and the understanding of physical systems, the jury said. Manabe and Hasselmann share one half of the prize for their research on climate models, while Parisi won the other half for his

Egypt is famous for its gargantuan pyramids and the ancient mummies that are buried there. The ancient process of mummification to preserve a body has long fascinated people all over the world. Researchers have now been able to reconstruct the faces of three men who lived in Egypt more than 2,000 years ago. Based on

Astronomy enthusiasts are celebrating World Space Week from October 4 to October 10. To make this event memorable for young girls and encourage them to consider a career in space research and STEM, the European Space Agency (ESA) has put a special Barbie doll — modelled after European astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti — in zero-gravity at