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Russian actress and a film director returned to Earth Sunday after spending 12 days on the International Space Station (ISS) shooting scenes for the first movie in orbit. Yulia Peresild, 37, and Klim Shipenko, 38, landed as scheduled on Kazakhstan’s steppe at 04:36 GMT (10:06am IST), according to footage broadcast live by Russia’s Roscosmos space

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

While NASA is sending a spacecraft to Jupiter’s asteroids in an unprecedented mission to unravel the mystery of solar system’s origin, a physicist has said that a meteorite, that crash-landed in a home in Canada this month, can offer similar results. Peter G. Brown, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Western

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

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

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

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,

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

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

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).

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

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

A gigantic comet — one of the largest ever seen — is heading toward the solar system. The comet, named Bernardinelli-Bernstein (BB), was discovered earlier this year and will reach its closest approach to the Sun in 10 years from now, around 2031. However, the comet poses no threat to the Earth. It is likely

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has given new insights into Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. Researchers have noticed that the speed of the winds in the massive planetary storm has increased over the last decade. This observation came after the analysis of Hubble’s regular “storm reports”. The average speed of the winds near the boundary has increased by

ISRO’s commercial arm, NewSpace India Limited (NSIL) on Friday announced its first “demand-driven” communication satellite mission as part of Space reforms announced by the Government in June last year. NSIL, incorporated in March 2019, got mandated to undertake operational satellite missions on a “demand-driven” model, wherein it has the responsibility to build, launch, own and

During monsoon, or even otherwise, there have been innumerable times that have we stepped out of our homes without an umbrella only to find the rain surprising us. To add to our troubles, on days even the weather forecasts have been bad at predicting the chances of rain and have let us down miserably. Now,

It appears the long-running feud between Elon Musk and fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos has surpassed the lower Earth orbit and gone extra-terrestrial. After Bezos’s Blue Origin challenged a NASA contract to Musk’s SpaceX for developing a lander to take astronauts to the Moon for the first time since 1972, Musk called out Bezos on social

Wood is a bad conductor of electricity. But scientists in Switzerland have found a way to generate electricity using wood and it is said to be safe and not give a shock. They have developed a new type of wooden flooring that generates power when a person walks on it. As surprising as it may

Dinosaurs roamed Earth millions of years ago but little was known about them outside the scientific community till the early 90s. Interesting details about these prehistoric reptiles are now being discovered after studying dinosaur fossils. One of these fossils has revealed that a strange dinosaur with spiky, armored skin lived around 150 million years ago.

Google accused India’s antitrust regulator in court on Friday of being a “habitual offender” by leaking confidential information of cases it was examining, an accusation the watchdog rejected. The Times of India and Reuters reported on Saturday that an investigation by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) had found that Alphabet’s Google abused the dominant

William Shatner, 90, is reportedly going to become the oldest person to fly into space on board Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket. Shatner, who portrayed Captain James T. Kirk in the popular Star Trek franchise, is set to be part of the second crew to fly into space in the New Shepard capsule in July.

NASA is developing an augmented reality (AR) application for astronauts to enable them to inspect and maintain equipment on the International Space Station (ISS) without needing assistance from ground control. This, the agency hopes, will reduce the impact of communication delays between the ISS crew and NASA mission control in Houston, Texas, US. While the

Engineers at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, US, have designed electronic microchips that can fly. These flying microchips, or microfliers, are the size of a sand grain and can fly without any motor or engine, much like a maple leaf or air-borne seeds of plants. These are the smallest-ever human-made flying structures. The microflier’s aerodynamics

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)-led Team CoStar is set to participate in the Subterranean Challenge finals that are scheduled to be held this week. The challenge involves a demonstration of multi-robot autonomy in a series of tests in extreme environments. According to NASA JPL, Team CoSTAR will be among the eight teams that will be

Infosys on Wednesday announced a strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop quantum computing capabilities and use cases. Infosys will use Amazon Braket to explore and build multiple use cases in quantum computing as part of Infosys Cobalt cloud offerings. Amazon Braket is a fully managed quantum computing service that helps scientists and developers get

There is a renewed focus on space, which has turned into a new frontier for humanity to conquer. While several nations are sending missions to outer space – as far as Mars – colonising either the Moon or Mars is understandably difficult. Besides logistical issues, there are practical problems. For example, transporting one brick to Mars can

COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent stay-at-home scenario forced people to renew focus on themselves and choose healthy options over a sedentary lifestyle. Some people achieved great success in losing that extra flab but others were a little less successful. What could be the reason behind this discrepancy? While there could be several variables — including

Three days into SpaceX’s all-civilian Inspiration4 mission, the crew has appeared in videos and images having a great time aboard the Dragon capsule. Apart from doing research while going around Earth, the crew members have live-streamed their zero-gravity ukulele performance and phone call with their colleagues back home. However, it seems they have an “extraordinary”

The Department of Space (DoS) has entered into a Framework MoU with aerospace startup Agnikul Cosmos for access to ISRO facilities and expertise towards the development and testing of subsystems/systems of space launch vehicles. The MoU will enable the company to undertake multiple tests and access facilities at various ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) centres

SpaceX’s all-civilian Inspiration4 crew spent their first day in orbit conducting scientific research and talking to children at a pediatric cancer hospital, after blasting off on their pioneering mission from Cape Canaveral the night before. St Jude tweeted its patients got to speak with the four American space tourists, “asking the questions we all want

Australia’s two most populous states are trialling facial recognition software that lets police check people are home during COVID-19 quarantine, expanding trials that have sparked controversy to the vast majority of the country’s population. Little-known tech firm Genvis said on a website for its software that New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria, home to Sydney,

SpaceX’s Inspiration4 is scheduled for launch on September 15 at 8:02pm EDT (5:32am IST on September 16). Netflix will livestream the lift-off of the all-civilian mission starting 7pm EDT (4:30am IST on September 16). The livestream will be shown via Netflix’s YouTube channel. SpaceX will take four people onboard its spacecraft and will orbit the

For decades, people across the world have wondered if there was a possibility to bring back the hundreds of species lost to extinction. Now, a group of scientists and entrepreneurs has come together to create a company that will work on technology to achieve this. Software entrepreneur Ben Lamm, who is known for his penchant

SpaceX is set to launch four people into space Wednesday on a three-day mission that is the first to orbit the Earth with exclusively private citizens on board, as Elon Musk’s company enters the space tourism fray. The Inspiration4 mission caps a summer that saw billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos cross the final frontier, on

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has now collected two rock samples, with signs that they were in contact with water for a long period of time boosting the case for ancient life on the Red Planet. “It looks like our first rocks reveal a potentially habitable sustained environment,” said Ken Farley, project scientist for the mission,

The eternal question lurking in the minds of every space enthusiast is — does life exist outside Earth? Despite numerous space expeditions, we have been unable to find any trace of life outside our planet so far. However, every once in a while we hear about a UFO seen in some part of the world.

A group of physicists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recently achieved a feat that could pave the way for practical carbon-free power. The achievement was three years in the making . It is a result of intensive research and design work, project leaders say. For the first time, researchers built a large high-temperature superconducting

About 90 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period, a gigantic dinosaur with ‘shark-like’ teeth prowled in present-day Uzbekistan, says a new study. The meat-eating dinosaur was 7.5-8 metres long and weighed 1,000 kg – which would make it a little longer than an African elephant and heavier than two fully grown water buffaloes. Researchers

Last year, a large group of scientists had gathered for a two-day conference to discuss whether biotechnology could make people younger. The conference was organised at a mansion owned by Russian-Israeli billionaire Yuri Milner in Los Altos Hills, California, US. Experts took to the stage to explain and discuss radical attempts at “rejuvenating” animals. Eventually,

Since Elon Musk-owned SpaceX announced that it was aiming for September 15 to launch the first all-civilian spaceflight mission, curiosity has been building about those who have signed up for this potentially historic sojourn. Four private citizens will fly to space and will spend three days there as part of the aptly named “Inspiration4” space mission,

India’s Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft has completed more than 9,000 orbits around the Moon, and imaging and scientific instruments on board have been providing excellent data, officials said on Monday. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is holding a two-day Lunar Science Workshop 2021, which began on Monday, to commemorate the completion of two years of operation

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Thursday barred Virgin Galactic from flying its SpaceShipTwo until the agency approves its final mishap investigation report from its July flight or determines the issues do not affect public safety. The FAA confirmed on Wednesday it was investigating a deviation in the descent of the flight of the Virgin

With artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) making inroads into what were hitherto exclusive human domains — like writing and driving — it was only a matter of time that artists too began experimenting with it. Many exhibition centres and auction houses around the world have begun taking interest in art pieces created with

Virgin Galactic is launching its first commercial research mission named “Unity 23” along with the Italian Air Force to the edge of space, it said on Thursday. The space travel company has set late September or early October as the time for the mission that will carry three paying crew members from the Air Force and

The battle for domination of space by private firms is not new. The latest competition saw Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos tussle in the race to make commercial space tourism a reality. Now, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has taken a swipe at Bezos’ Blue Origin for hiring a high-profile strategic advisory firm after it lost

Researchers at Rice University in Houston, Texas, US, have found a way to weave “smart clothing” that can monitor your heart. A snug athletic shirt was created with conductive carbon nanotube fibres that is said to be able to measure your heart rate efficiently and accurately. Researchers state that the nanotube fibres sewn into the