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SpaceX will apply for an exemption from US sanctions against Iran in a bid to offer its satellite internet service to the country, owner Elon Musk said on Monday. “Starlink will apply for an exemption from sanctions against Iran,” Musk said in response to a tweet from a science reporter. Musk had initially announced that

Mars, by virtue of its tenuous atmosphere and proximity to our solar system’s asteroid belt, is far more vulnerable than Earth to being struck by space rocks – one of the many differences between the two planetary neighbours. Scientists are now gaining a fuller understanding of this Martian trait, with help from NASA’s robotic InSight

A team of scientists has announced a surprising discovery – that they were able to create matter out of nothing. The experiment was carried out in January 2022, in which strong electric fields were created in a simple laboratory leveraging the unique properties of grapheme, which enabled the creation of particle-antiparticle pair from nothing at

India’s first human space-flight mission, Gaganyaan, is expected to launch in 2024, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said recently. The government had planned the space flight for 2021, but the schedule got delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The first test-flight will be followed by a female-looking spacefaring humanoid robot. The Indian Air Force (IAF) has

American space agency NASA has updated its Eyes on the Solar System website, which allows space enthusiasts to explore the “universe beyond and the spacecraft exploring them”. Visitors can explore the planets, their moons, asteroids, comets and the spacecraft from 1950 to 2050. The website also allows them to simulate the landing of NASA’s spacecraft,

Blue Origin rocket has failed mid-flight, a day after its lift-off. This has caused the rocket to abort its cargo capsule to safety before crashing into the Texas desert. The rocket aimed to send NASA-funded experiments and other payloads to the edge of the space. The booster crashed within the designated hazard area. The rocket

NASA has completed important repairs on its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, the US space agency recently announced. The leaking fuel seals on the SLS were replaced by engineers last week. One of the fuel lines to the SLS started leaking earlier this month forcing the space agency to halt its attempt to launch Artemis

The Moon has specific areas that never receive sunlight, regions that are located in areas of ‘permanent shadow’. These dark regions include the sunken floors of impact craters that remain shadowed and are extremely cold. Scientists believe that these sites, devoid of sunlight, might prove to be fruitful if explored — due to the possibility of

NASA is reportedly considering a third attempt at launching its Artemis I Moon rocket on September 23, according to a senior official. The US space agency could launch the Artemis I SLS-Orion spacecraft on either September 23 or on September 27. The new dates were revealed days after NASA halted the launch of the rocket for the second

India is reportedly planning to design and build a new reusable rocket for the global market, Department of Space Secretary and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman S Somanath announced during the Bengaluru Space Expo (BSX) 2022 on Monday. The next launch vehicle from ISRO after GSLV Mk III could be a reusable one and

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured in-depth details of a stellar nursery nicknamed the Tarantula Nebula. Webb’s recent image of the 30 Doradus, or Taratula Nebula, displays several never-before-seen young, with galaxies in background. The picture also reveals the composition of the nebula’s gas and dust. Located around 161,000 light-years away from us, Tarantula has

US space agency NASA has a significant impact in all areas of human life. The commercial sector has traditionally benefited from technological transfers from NASA. As part of its most recent effort to improve human life, he space agency has financed technologies that can help relieve symptoms of menopause. In a release, NASA said that

NASA’s Artemis I moon rocket launch — the US space agency’s second attempt to send its lunar rocket to the moon — was halted for the second time on Saturday, after a fuel leak was detected. According to NASA, the launch will not take place on the next planned date of September 6, which means the next launch

NASA is ready for its second attempt at launching the Artemis I Space Launch System (SLS) rocket on September 3. On August 29, when Artemis I was initially supposed to embark on its journey to the Moon and back, the launch controllers were unable to cool down the four RS-25 rocket engines, according to NASA.

Skyroot Aerospace on Friday revealed that it had raised $51 millon (roughly Rs. 400 crore) from a Singapore-based investor, according to a report. The startup will reportedly use the funding to build the country’s first private space launch vehicles (SLV), and accelerate the firm’s plans to launch heavy payloads into low-Earth orbit. It is looking to start commercial

NASA has announced to award five new missions to Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX). The US Space agency, in a brief on Thursday, mentioned that the missions will help in the crew transportation services to the International Space Station (ISS) as part of the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract. These five crewed missions

A piece of digital artwork that won first place in a fine art competition has prompted discussion on social media about the nature of art and what it means to be an artist.  Jason Allen came first at the Colorado State Fair’s fine art competition using an Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated artwork on Monday. According

Combining techniques of nanotechnology and optics, researchers at the Bar-Ilan University in Israel have developed nanometric diamond particles that could be used for medical and cosmetic remedies through the skin. In the paper published in the scientific journal ACS Nano, the researchers also claimed the development of a safe laser-based optical method, which is capable

Greenland’s ice sheet is reported so out of balance with the Arctic climate that it can no longer hold on to its current size, a new report claims. Furthermore, it is suggested that the ice sheet is irreversibly committed to reduce by 59,000 square km, which is considerably larger than the area of Denmark, Greenland’s

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) team has completed an observation campaign to confirm the orbit of DART’s target asteroid Dimorphos. DART is a spacecraft designed to impact an asteroid as part of a test to verify if the method can be effective in changing the course of an asteroid in the future, for planetary defense.

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS) recently shared an “intriguing” daylight sight of a bright dot in the middle of a desert on Earth. “A bright dot in the Negev desert…so unusual to see human-made lights in day passes!” European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti tweeted while sharing three photos showing a

The James Webb Space Telescope has, for the first time, detected evidence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet outside the solar system. The evidence has been spotted on the exoplanet WASP-39 b, which was discovered in 2011. Located some 700 light-years from Earth, WASP-39 b is a hot gas giant planet that

In its quest for signs of ancient microbial life on Mars, the NASA’s Perseverance Rover has unearthed several fascinating pieces of information about the Red Planet. It landed on the Jezero crater in 2020 and has been since exploring the region. In its latest discovery, the rover has found that the floor of the crater,

Some 66 million years ago, when the land was ruled by dinosaurs, the oceans used to be infested with giant marine predators called mosasaurs. And, now, researchers have discovered the fossil of a new species of mosasaurs named Thalassotitan atrox. Mosasaurs were like giant marine lizards that could grow up to 12 metres in length.

NASA is preparing for Artemis I, the launch of its Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, along with the Orion spacecraft for astronauts, which is set to blast off on August 29. The US space agency is readying to test its flight system that is designed to send astronauts back to the Moon, decades after it completed its Apollo

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), hailed as the world’s largest and most powerful telescope, has captured some intriguing photos of Jupiter. Apart from powerful winds and giant storms, the new images also feature some magnificent auroras on the gas giant. The pictures offer some intricate details of Jupiter that scientists think may shed more

For more than 50 years, telescopes and the needs of astronomers have dominated the summit of Mauna Kea, a mountain sacred to Native Hawaiians that’s also one of the finest places in the world to study the night sky. That’s now changing with a new state law saying Mauna Kea must be protected for future

Two of the largest mass extinction of species on Earth took place at the end of the Permian geologic period. Such was the magnitude that 86% of all the animal species were wiped out in the extinction that took place 252 million years ago. The event also marked the onset of a new era where

Astronomers, observing a nearby galaxy with a powerful telescope, have detected one of the largest black hole jets ever. The jet with a size of a million light-years from end to end is not just huge, but has been estimated to be 50 times larger than the galaxy. The nearby galaxy, NGC2663, is located in

A provincial capital in southwest China has dimmed outdoor advertisements, subway lighting and building signs to save energy, official announcements said, as the area battles a power crunch triggered by record-high temperatures. The mercury has soared beyond 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in Sichuan province this week, fuelling massive demand for air conditioning and drying

Scientists have developed a neuromorphic chip for running AI applications that can perform computations directly in memory without requiring a network connection with a cloud. In addition, the chip consumes a small amount of energy making it more efficient than other chips. The discovery is expected to enable AI to be used in a range

NASA’s gigantic Space Launch System moon rocket, topped with an uncrewed astronaut capsule, is set to begin an hours-long crawl to its launchpad Tuesday night ahead of the behemoth’s debut test flight later this month. The 322-foot-tall (98-meter-tall) rocket is scheduled to embark on its first mission to space — without any humans — on

The samples from the Ryugu asteroid brought back by Hayabusa-2, an exploration spacecraft sent by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, could be the most contaminant-free rocks from outer space ever examined by humans. In an in-depth analysis conducted by a team of Japanese researchers at JAMSTEC (Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology), it is

In a fresh approach, scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, have aimed at treating Alzheimer’s disease using new technology. The approach involves focussing on microglia, a type of cell that stabilises the brain by getting rid of damaged neurons and proteins that are often associated with dementia and other brain illnesses. While the

Billionaire tycoon Elon Musk-led SpaceX launched another batch of Starlink satellites into orbit on Friday.Taking to his official Twitter account, Musk, the founder of American spacecraft manufacturer, and satellite communications corporation SpaceX shared the details about the new satellite launch. According to the SpaceX reports, Falcon 9 launched 46 Starlink satellites to low-Earth orbit from

Children, even some who are too young for school, know you can’t make a baby without sperm and an egg. But a team of researchers in Israel have called into question the basics of what we teach children about the birds and the bees, and created a mouse embryo using just stem cells. It lived

The Earth is approximately 1.1 degree Celsius warmer than it was at the start of the industrial revolution. That warming has not been uniform, with some regions warming at a far greater pace. One such region is the Arctic. A new study shows that the Arctic has warmed nearly four times faster than the rest

Antarctica’s coastal glaciers are shedding icebergs more rapidly than nature can replenish the crumbling ice, doubling previous estimates of losses from the world’s largest ice sheet over the past 25 years, a satellite analysis showed on Wednesday. The first-of-its-kind study, led by researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles and published in

Three workers at a Google Data Centre in Iowa, the United States, were injured in an explosion, according to a report in Newsweek. The three workers – all electricians – were transported to the local hospital after suffering severe burns, the outlet further said. The electricians were working on a substation near the data centre

An Iranian satellite launched by Russia blasted off from Kazakhstan early Tuesday and went into orbit amid controversy that Moscow might use it to improve its surveillance of military targets in Ukraine. A live feed from Russian space agency Roscosmos showed the launch of the Soyuz-2.1b rocket carrying the Khayyam satellite from the Russia-controlled Baikonur

Many autistic people experience difficulties in expressing their emotions. This can result in increased anxiety, depression, anger and physical health problems. Research shows autistic adults are significantly more likely to experience depression and anxiety than their peers. Imagine a future, where technology could help people regulate their emotions and alert them to sensory overload before

Do you know a newborn’s umbilical cord is home to life-saving stem cells like lymphoma and leukaemia? This is one of the major reasons parents, these days, opt to store the blood in an infant’s umbilical cord. Notably, if pregnancies get affected by gestational diabetes, the stem cells of the umbilical cord get damaged, making

Millimetre-wavelength light originating from a collision of a neutron star with another star has been captured for the first time by researchers. The team, led by astrophysicists from Northwestern University, US, and Radboud University in the Netherlands, has claimed that the flash emerging from this collision was among the most energetic short-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs)

South Korea’s first lunar orbiter successfully launched on a year-long mission to observe the Moon, Seoul said Friday, with the payload including a new disruption-tolerant network for sending data from space. Danuri — a portmanteau of the Korean words for “Moon” and “enjoy” — was on a Falcon 9 rocket launched from Cape Canaveral in

A charred chunk of space junk found jutting from a paddock by an Australian sheep farmer was confirmed to be part of one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX missions by authorities Thursday. The ethereal-looking debris, believed to have plummeted to Earth on July 9, was found last week in Dalgety — a remote area near Australia’s

The James Webb Space Telescope has peered through time and huge amounts of dust to capture a new image of the Cartwheel Galaxy, revealing the spinning ring of colour in unprecedented clarity, NASA and the European Space Agency said Tuesday. Located around 500 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Sculptor, the Cartwheel gained its shape

Scientists combined data from NASA’s New Horizons mission with novel laboratory experiments and exospheric modelling to reveal the likely composition of the red cap on Pluto’s moon Charon and how it may have formed. This first-ever description of Charon’s dynamic methane atmosphere using new experimental data provides a fascinating glimpse into the origins of this

A Chinese rocket fell back to Earth on Saturday over the Indian Ocean but NASA said Beijing had not shared the “specific trajectory information” needed to know where possible debris might fall. US Space Command said the Long March 5B rocket re-entered over the Indian Ocean at approximately 12:45pm EDT Saturday (16:45 GMT), but referred