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The International Space Station (ISS) was thrown briefly out of control on Thursday when jet thrusters of a newly arrived Russian research module inadvertently fired a few hours after it was docked to the orbiting outpost, NASA officials said. The seven crew members aboard – two Russian cosmonauts, three NASA astronauts, a Japanese astronaut, and

The 2020 Summer Olympics is currently underway in Tokyo, Japan, and NASA has posted a stunning night view of Tokyo city on Instagram, taken from the International Space Station (ISS). The picture shows the city in all its glory as the games unfolded. In its post, NASA wrote, “The Olympic games light up the night”,

Astronomers have found the first evidence of water vapour in the atmosphere of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System. They believe Ganymede may hold more water than all of Earth’s oceans. But finding water in liquid form there is difficult. The temperatures are so cold that all the water on the

Fresh off his trip to space, billionaire businessman Jeff Bezos on Monday offered to cover up to $2 billion in NASA costs if the US space agency awards his company Blue Origin a contract to make a spacecraft designed to land astronauts back on the moon. NASA in April awarded rival billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s

Fewer fields have witnessed advancements on the same scale as robotics. There have been many inspirations — from dogs to humans — for scientists and engineers to design a robot. We have seen these machines walk beside their owners, perform acrobatics, and even assist humans in identifying and lifting work in warehouses. That the robots

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter is all set to make its tenth flight on Mars and officials said that it could happen on July 24. Ingenuity, which arrived on the Red Planet aboard the Mars Perseverance rover on February 18, is the first to have flown on a terrestrial planet other than Earth. The space agency said

DeepMind, an artificial intelligence (AI) subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet, said it has been successful in predicting the shape of nearly every protein in the human body as well as thousands of other proteins found in 20 additional organisms that scientists rely on for their research, including yeast, fruit flies, and mice. This breakthrough is

NASA has shared a stunning photograph on Instagram of a galaxy called M77, and has offered a brief explanation of how it has been “shaped.” For a long time, the shapes of many galaxies, including our own Milky Way, have puzzled many scientists. The Milky Way is spiral-shaped and has arms full of stars. However,

The Perseverance Mars rover is preparing to collect its first rock sample from the site of an ancient lake bed, as its mission to search for signs of past life begins in earnest, NASA said Wednesday. The milestone is expected to take place within two weeks in a scientifically interesting region of the Jezero Crater

NASA has shared the image that got carved out on the lunar surface and in the history of space exploration when Neil Armstrong put his left foot on the surface of the Moon on July 20, 1969 — the first human footprint there. “What was only one small step 52 years ago, has inspired a

Jeff Bezos is all set to blast off aboard his aerospace company Blue Origin’s New Shepard launch vehicle for a suborbital flight today (July 20). The space flight will comprise a history-making all-civilian crew. The launch of the 11-minute journey to space is planned from a desert site in West Texas, US. If all goes

Space is a repository of planets, galaxies, and umpteen stars. And agencies such as NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) have, from time to time, brought to us some breathtaking visuals, in a way acting as a bridge between humans and the universe. On Saturday, NASA shared a fascinating view of what is referred to

Ever dreamt of flying to space? If yes, then you can at least try your luck to turn your dream into a reality by submitting your entry into Virgin Galactic’s charity contest that can land you two free tickets to space on one of the first Virgin Galactic commercial space flights. So far, we have

The Hubble Space Telescope should be back in action soon, following a tricky, remote repair job by NASA. The orbiting observatory went dark in mid-June, with all astronomical viewing halted. NASA initially suspected a 1980s-era computer as the source of the problem. But after the backup payload computer also failed, flight controllers at Maryland’s Goddard

An 18-year-old physics student whose father heads an investment management firm is set to take the place of a person who put up $28 million (roughly Rs. 210 crores) in an auction to take part in the inaugural space tourism flight for billionaire Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin company. Blue Origin said on Thursday Oliver Daemen

Scientists have identified a new dinosaur genus following the analysis of a fossilised jawbone discovered over two decades ago in the Portell locality of Spain’s Castellón province. The styracosternan hadrosaurid dinosaur, scientists say, was likely six to eight metres long, a herbivore, and closely related to species found in modern-day China and Niger. The study

Virgin Galactic acknowledged on Tuesday that billionaire founder Richard Branson never rode a bicycle to the launch site of his space flight on Sunday, as depicted in a highly publicised video included in the company’s webcast of the event. The video clip showed Branson riding his bike toward New Mexico’s state-owned Spaceport America near the town

NASA administrator Bill Nelson has lauded billionaire Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin Galactic, who along with five other crew members soared to the edge of the space aboard the VSS Unity spacecraft on Sunday. Nelson, a former astronaut who went to space in 1986, said that it was hard to believe back then that

Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are competing fiercely to outwit each other and capture the huge commercial space tourism market. And their fellow billionaire Elon Musk appears to be siding with the British entrepreneur and his Virgin Galactic venture. Musk, the SpaceX CEO who aims to colonise Mars someday and make humans a multi-planetary species, seems to have

Virgin Galactic is set to send its billionaire founder Richard Branson, along with a crew of five others, aboard VSS Unity to the edge of space today, July 11. Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity SpaceShipTwo vehicle will lift off from Spaceport America near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, US. Now, the question many have been asking

NASA will launch its Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER, in 2023 to get a closer view of the Moon’s South Pole and evaluate the concentration of water as well as other potential resources on its surface. The space agency is undertaking the mission to understand if it is possible for human life to

NASA on a regular basis shares pictures on its social media handles of missions currently underway. But occasionally, it takes us down the memory lane too. On Thursday, July 8, the American space agency shared images of a mission from a decade ago on its Twitter and Instagram handles. It was on this day back

Singapore researchers have developed a smart foam material that allows robots to sense nearby objects, and repairs itself when damaged, just like human skin. Artificially innervated foam, or AiFoam, is a highly elastic polymer created by mixing fluoropolymer with a compound that lowers surface tension. This allows the spongy material to fuse easily into one

Three billionaire entrepreneurs – Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson – are each vying to usher in a new era of private commercial space travel. Here is how their rival ventures compare in the race to open up space travel. Tickets Bezos, Branson, and Musk have been investing billions of dollars in their space

A team of astronomers has discovered a huge cloud of hot, faintly glowing gas in space that is bigger than the Milky Way galaxy. They said that the cosmic gas cloud, the first of its kind, may have stripped from a galaxy. What they found most surprising was that the cloud has remained clumped together

NASA astrophysicists have used computer simulation to demonstrate that tsunami-like structures may form on a large scale, deep into space when gas escapes the gravitational pull of a supermassive black hole. Not just that, researchers added that these supermassive black holes are capable of hosting the largest Tsunami-like structures in the universe.  On Sunday, in an

Astrophysicist have observed the merger of a black hole with a neutron star for the very first time. Approximately 900 million light years away a black hole swallowed a neutron star. Ten days later, another black hole gobbled up its neutron star companion, and the two events caused gravitational waves that finally hit our planet in January

COVID-19 has turned the world upside down. While vaccination drives in several countries have gained momentum, the threat of a third wave in some countries, including India, looms large. A team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have developed a wearable biosensor

When their two-year-old son Biel started falling over a lot and had difficulty climbing stairs after learning to walk, Jaume Puig and his wife sought medical help to figure out the problem. After visiting several doctors, the toddler was diagnosed with low vision, a condition far more common than blindness that makes daily tasks a

NASA has announced its computational innovations are now available to the public for free download. The software catalogue has over 800 programmes that were originally developed to help explore space. The American space agency feels that by making these software widely accessible, real world problems can be solved. These software are based around aeronautics, autonomous

Researchers at IBM have mathematically proven that there are certain functions restricted classical computers cannot perform but restricted quantum computers can. However, they concede that quantum computers can’t defeat their classical counterparts merely on the basis of a different architecture. Not only is there a need for finding and writing theoretical proofs of the advantages

NASA recently shared a stunning image of interacting galaxy pair IC 1623 captured by the Hubble Space Telescope on its Instagram handle. The galaxy pair is located about 275 million light-years away from the Earth, in the constellation Cetus (The Whale). The space agency titled the image, “Caught in a cosmic bad romance”, and added

Raheva was only a year old when she died after colliding with a net of power-lines as she was flying through a morning sky from the coastal grasslands of Jakhau towards her natal ground in Naliya, Gujarat. Alfin lived longer, but in melancholy. By the time she matured at the age of three years, her

On April 6, NASA’s Perseverance rover took a historic selfie beside the Ingenuity copter on the Martian surface. It used a camera, called WATSON, at the end of its robotic arm to snap the shot. Surprisingly, when the final image was released by the US space agency, the robotic arm was not visible and it

A highly awaited US intelligence report on dozens of mysterious unidentified flying object sightings said most could not be explained, but did not rule out that some could be alien spacecraft. The unclassified report said researchers could explain only one of 144 UFO sightings by US government personnel and sources between 2004 and 2021, sightings

Caviar, known for creating customised, luxury versions of smartphones, has unveiled the first look of its new lineup for iPhone. The company plans to put meteorite fragments, precious metals and stones on the back of the purported iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro Max smartphones so that they look futuristic. The luxury brand has named

Launching one of the richest individuals on Earth into orbit has proved a leap too far for insurers, who are not ready to price the risk of losing Jeff Bezos or his fellow space travellers. Amazon CEO Bezos, a lifelong space enthusiast, has been vying with Elon Musk and Richard Branson to become the first

The next full Moon, that most people on the planet will be able to watch on June 24 at 2:40pm EDT (June 25 at 12:10am IST) is known by different names in different regions and cultures. Around this time, the Moon appears full for about three days — in this case from the morning of

Betelgeuse, once said to be the ninth most luminous star in the sky, started dimming rapidly in December 2019. Even though Betelgeuse was always a “variable” star, meaning its brightness would fluctuate, by February 2020 it had reported a loss of nearly two-thirds of its brightness. This made astronomers wonder if it was soon going

Plastic waste — that includes carry bags, soft drink or water bottles, more — may soon be converted into vanilla flavouring using genetically engineered bacteria. According to new research by scientists at the University of Edinburgh, there’s a way to turn plastic waste into vanillin — the main flavour component of vanilla beans — using

The Hubble Space Telescope, which has been peering into the universe for more than 30 years, has been down for the past few days, NASA said Friday. The problem is a payload computer that stopped working last Sunday, the US space agency said. NASA continues to work to resolve an issue with the payload computer

Jim Mellon, the billionaire investor-author, has said the food production industry will transform as early as 2030 and that 50 percent of all meat eaten by humans on the planet will either be plant-based or cell ag (cellular agriculture) produced within the next 10 years. He said that half of the seafood will also be produced using

An Arizona beta user of Starlink internet service from SpaceX, a company headed by Elon Musk, was recently forced to resort to an unconventional method to get back online after his satellite dish overheated and went into a thermal shutdown. Following the service disruption, the Starlink app displayed an error message, that read, “Offline: Thermal shutdown.

Researchers in Australia have developed a new technology that uses infrared imaging to allow people to see clearly in the dark. These ultra-thin films could one day turn regular spectacles into night-vision goggles and also revolutionise several sectors, such as autonomous vehicle navigation, optical tomography, and food quality control. The film is thinner than human

A new study shows that making music and singing together can improve bonds and lower stress. This is something that many of us would have intuitively assumed, as music is a near universal source of relaxation, comfort, and connection, whether you’re humming while running an errand, or songs are blasting on speakers in the gym

The first crew for China’s new space station prepared to blast off this week for the latest step in Beijing’s ambitious programme to establish itself as a space power. The mission is China’s first crewed spaceflight in nearly five years, and a matter of prestige for the government as it prepares to mark the 100th

Researchers in Singapore say they have found a way to charge gadgets worn by a person by tapping the human body as a medium for wireless power transmission. They say their technique draws power from one source, say a mobile phone kept in the person’s pocket and transfers it to other gadgets worn by the

A species goes extinct when there are none of its kind left. In other words, extinction is about small numbers, so how does big data help us study extinction? Luckily for us, each individual of a species carries with it signatures of its past, information on how connected/ isolated it is today, and other information