Science

There are hundreds of millions of asteroids in our solar system, which means new asteroids are discovered quite frequently. It also means close encounters between asteroids and Earth are fairly common. Some of these close encounters end up with the asteroid impacting Earth, occasionally with severe consequences. A recently discovered asteroid, named 2023 BU, has

Google is reportedly working on the ability to set up an Android phone via the company’s Fast Pair feature. The capability could reportedly debut on a smartphone with the Samsung Galaxy S23 series that is expected to be unveiled by the South Korean conglomerate at its Galaxy Unpacked 2023 event on February 1. The upcoming

Boston Dynamics has unveiled the latest version of its Atlas Robot that is capable of improved human-like movement and actions. The Waltham, Massachusetts-based robot firm, showed off the humanoid robot with grippers while displaying its capabilities via a video posted to YouTube. The robot is seen performing complex actions such as grabbing and throwing an

Astronomers have detected in the stellar halo that represents the Milky Way’s outer limits a group of stars more distant from Earth than any known within our own galaxy — almost halfway to a neighboring galaxy. The researchers said these 208 stars inhabit the most remote reaches of the Milky Way‘s halo, a spherical stellar cloud

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Microsoft on Thursday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to fuel the growth of space technology start-ups in India. The MoU seeks to empower space tech start-ups across the country with technology tools and platforms, go-to-market support and mentoring to help them scale and become enterprise-ready. This collaboration has

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is raising $750 million (roughly Rs. 6,200 crore) in a new round of funding that values the rocket and satellite company at $137 billion (roughly Rs. 11,33,800 crore) from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, CNBC reported late Monday. Reuters had reported in November that SpaceX was in talks about an offering of mostly

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will turn its focus on science experiments in 2023 with dedicated missions to the Sun — Aditya — and the moon — Chandrayaan-3 — even as the nascent start-up sector is set to soar in the space applications segment. The upcoming year will also witness a series of experiments on India’s maiden human space

NASA has formally retired its Mars InSight lander, the first robotic probe specially designed to study the deep interior of a distant world, four years after it arrived on the surface of the red planet, the US space agency announced on Wednesday. Mission controllers at NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles determined the mission

After a pair of Islamist bombings rocked the south-central Indian city of Hyderabad in 2013, officials rushed to install 5,000 CCTV cameras to bolster security. Now there are nearly 700,000 in and around the metropolis. The most striking symbol of the city’s rise as a surveillance hotspot is the gleaming new Command and Control Center

Nuclear fusion holds huge promise as a source of clean, abundant energy that could power the world. Now, fusion researchers at a national laboratory in the US have achieved something physicists have been working towards for decades, a process known as “ignition”. This step involves getting more energy out from fusion reactions than is put

Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite-based broadband internet system, could become much more accessible in the coming years. The Elon Musk-owned company has reportedly received the go-ahead to launch an additional 7,500 satellites, expanding the Starlink broadband to over 10,000 low-orbiting satellites over the next decade. The new Starlink satellites will help users connect to the satellite-based broadband

A dust devil looks a bit like a tornado, but is weaker and rarely lasts more than about a minute. It is a twisting column of warmed air scooting across sun-heated ground, made visible by the dust that it lofts upwards. Although usually benign, occasionally dust devils can kill. Dust devils have been known to

NASA’s Orion capsule made a blisteringly fast return from the Moon Sunday, parachuting into the Pacific off Mexico to conclude a test flight that should clear the way for astronauts on the next lunar flyby. The incoming capsule hit the atmosphere at Mach 32, or 32 times the speed of sound, and endured reentry temperatures

US House Representatives Earl Francis Blumenauer and Adam Schiff want further US Department of Agriculture (USDA) scrutiny of Elon Musk’s Neuralink following a Reuters report that outlined mistakes in the brain chip company’s animal testing program, their offices said on Thursday. Reuters reported on Monday that the USDA’s inspector general is investigating Neuralink for potential

Elon Musk’s Neuralink, a medical device company, is under federal investigation for potential animal-welfare violations amid internal staff complaints that its animal testing is being rushed, causing needless suffering and deaths, according to documents reviewed by Reuters and sources familiar with the investigation and company operations. Neuralink is developing a brain implant it hopes will

Elon Musk said on Wednesday a wireless device developed by his brain chip company Neuralink is expected to begin human clinical trials in six months. The company is developing brain chip interfaces that it says could enable disabled patients to move and communicate again. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area and Austin, Texas, Neuralink

NASA’s Orion spacecraft was placed in lunar orbit Friday, officials said, as the much-delayed Moon mission proceeded successfully. A little over a week after the spacecraft blasted off from Florida bound for the Moon, flight controllers “successfully performed a burn to insert Orion into a distant retrograde orbit,” the US space agency said on its

ISRO on Wednesday announced that RH200, the versatile sounding rocket of the Indian space agency, has registered its 200th consecutive successful launch from the shores of Thumba, Thiruvananthapuram. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has termed it a “historic moment”. It was witnessed by former President Ram Nath Kovind and ISRO chairman S Somanath, among

The Indian Space Research Organisation will launch PSLV-C54/ EOS-06 mission with Oceansat-3 and eight nano satellites, including one from Bhutan, on board from Sriharikota spaceport on November 26. The launch is scheduled at 11.56am on Saturday, the national space agency said on Sunday. Asked about the passengers aboard the rocket, a senior ISRO official told

Spacetech startup Pixxel is set to launch its third hyperspectral satellite – Anand – onboard ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) from the Sriharikota spaceport on Saturday. Anand is a hyperspectral microsatellite weighing less than 15 kg but having more than 150 wavelengths that will enable it to capture images of the earth in greater

India will host a meeting of science ministers from G-20 member nations at Coimbatore in July next year during its presidency of the grouping of the world’s 20 major developed and emerging economies. Besides the Science-20 Summit with the theme ‘Disruptive Science for Innovative and Sustainable Growth’, the science administrators will also host the “Research Innovation

India launched its first privately developed rocket, the Vikram-S, on Friday, a milestone in the country’s effort to create a commercial space industry. The 545-kg rocket developed by space startup Skyroot took off from the Indian space agency’s launch site near Chennai. The rocket has the capability of reaching Mach 5 – five times the

Several SpaceX employees who were fired after circulating an open letter calling out CEO Elon Musk’s behaviour have filed a complaint accusing the company of violating labour laws. The complaint, made Wednesday to the National Labor Relations Board, details the aftermath of what allegedly happened inside SpaceX after employees circulated the letter in June, which,

NASA launched the most powerful rocket ever built on a journey to the Moon on Wednesday, in a spectacular blaze of light and sound that marked the start of the space agency’s new flagship program, Artemis. The 32-story tall Space Launch System (SLS) blasted off from the storied Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 01:47

NASA’s huge next-generation rocketship was on course Wednesday for a crewless voyage around the moon and back hours after blasting off from Florida on its debut flight, half a century after the final lunar mission of the Apollo era. The much-delayed launch kicked off Apollo’s successor program, Artemis, aimed at returning astronauts to the lunar

Third time’s the charm? After two failed attempts, NASA plans to launch its new mega Moon rocket early Wednesday from Florida, less than a week after the massive machine withstood a hurricane. “Our time is coming. And we hope that that is on Wednesday,” said Mike Sarafin, the manager of the much-delayed Artemis 1 mission,

SpaceX has bought an advertising package on Twitter for its satellite internet service Starlink, said Elon Musk, who owns the rocket company and the social media platform that is seeing an exodus of advertisers. “SpaceX Starlink bought a tiny – not large – ad package to test effectiveness of Twitter advertising in Australia and Spain. Did

The Indian Space Research Orgnisation (ISRO) has for the first time supplied a rocket system to support a private launch vehicle built in the country. Chennai-based space technology startup Agnikul Cosmos received its first flight termination system (FTS) on November 7 from ISRO, with the support of IN-SPACe (Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre),

NASA’s new $4 billion (roughly Rs. 32,280 crore) moon rocket endured fierce winds and heavy rains early Thursday as it rode out Hurricane Nicole on its Florida launchpad, apparently with only minor damage, according to an early NASA inspection in the storm’s aftermath. Sustained winds of 85 miles per hour (136.8km per hour) were measured by launch-site

Elon Musk, who heads five companies including Tesla and Twitter, said in a tweet on Friday that his companies will be well positioned in 2023 despite the possibility of a tough economy. Musk’s tweet comes a day after he raised the possibility of Twitter going bankrupt. Earlier in the day, in his first company-wide email,