News

Astronomers and amatuer skywatchers will get to see the longest lunar eclipse of this century this month. In two weeks from now, on November 19 (Kartik Purnima), Earth will pass between the Sun and Moon, creating a shadow on the Moon’s surface. The near-total lunar eclipse will peak just after 1:30pm IST, when the Earth

Have you ever imagined what the sound of a nebula in deep space is like? Thanks to NASA, we can now hear the sound of the Butterfly Nebula through data sonification as it soars across space at more than 966,000kmph. The data sonification process converts data to sound. The Butterfly Nebula, also known as NGC

Saturn, the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in our solar system, has the most spectacular and complex ring system. Earth may soon have its own set of rings, according to researchers at the University of Utah, US. These rings which may develop around our planet, however, will be made up of space

There’s some good news for people suffering from Type 1 diabetes. More than 40 healthcare professionals and legal experts have for the first time issued guidance for using Do-It-Yourself (DIY) technology-driven systems to manage their condition. Traditional monitoring of Type 1 diabetes involves taking blood samples and calculating precise insulin dosages to maintain blood sugar levels. This

NASA is sending Snoopy, the iconic and adorable character from Peanuts, to the Moon aboard its first Artemis mission early next year. Snoopy became the world’s first beagle to land on the lunar surface in the Peanuts comic strips by the late Charles M. Schulz in 1969. More than 60 years later, it is again

The European Space Agency (ESA) and Russia’s Roscosmos plan to launch their joint Mars rover mission in 2022. It was earlier planned to take off in 2020, but got delayed for several reasons. The main cause behind the delay is that the journey from Earth to Mars is only attempted when the planets are favourably

Space research is one of the major fields of exploration today. Discoveries and speculations backed by technological advancements are opening up new vistas for human life. Amidst these endeavours, a lot of effort is being put to find the best way to produce oxygen on the Moon. Scientists seem to have found a solution to

NASA scientists have found evidence for a new transiting circumbinary planet. The term refers to any planet which orbits around two different stars. The evidence was received using an unprecedented technique. Researchers used NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) to discover this unique planet. With the use of TESS and its predecessor Kepler space telescope

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter has soared through the Red Planet’s skies for the 15th time. The chopper, which arrived on Mars attached to the belly of the Perseverance rover, landed within the targeted zone on the Martian surface, said NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which manages the Ingenuity mission. Initially, when NASA was making the

NASA has shared an image of a nebula captured by its Hubble Space Telescope that looks like a deep tunnel in space. The nebula is formed by a dying star, named HD 44179, which has been shedding its outer layers for about 14,000 years. The star is similar to the Sun, but it is dying

NASA’s four-member SpaceX Crew-2 mission is targeting a return to Earth on Monday, November 8. The splashdown is expected to be off the coast of Florida, USA. The Crew Dragon spacecraft, named Endeavour, was earlier scheduled to undock from the International Space Station (ISS) on November 7. However, mission teams delayed the return due to

Many of us who enjoy nature, wildlife or just being outdoors have one thing in common – we all love the sensorial experiences that the outdoors provides. Like the sight of the flowing river, the touch of cool breeze in the mountains, the smell of the forest, calls/ songs of the birds to name a

The European Space Agency (ESA) has shared a stunning wide image of one of the biggest impact basins in the Solar System, located on Mars. Hellas, with a diameter of 1,430 miles (2,300km) and a depth of over 4.3 miles (7km), is believed to have formed between 3.8 billion and 4.1 billion years ago after

A federal judge on Thursday rejected a lawsuit by Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin against the US government over NASA’s decision to award a $2.9 billion (roughly Rs. 21,559 crore) lunar lander contract to rival billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Judge Richard Hertling of the US Court of Federal Claims in Washington granted the government’s

The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced a new mission where human-made emissions of greenhouse gases will be tracked from space. ESA, in collaboration with the European Union’s (EU) Earth-monitoring programme Copernicus, announced this mission during the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 in Glasgow on November 2. It will incorporate a constellation of satellites called

Agnikul Cosmos, an Indian space tech startup looking to take advantage of the massive space travel opportunity of the next decade, has been grabbing headlines in the recent times. From signing deals with Alaska Aerospace Corporation in the US, to signing an MoU with ISRO for accessing its infrastructure and technical expertise, Agnikul Cosmos has made giant leaps

The help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been deployed by tech firms and NGOs worldwide to fight the climate change crisis. Gadgets 360 caught up with some, including the team at Sustainable Environment and Ecological Development Society (SEEDS) — a New Delhi-based NGO — and IBM India, to talk about their efforts to apply tech

Virtual clothing trials are the next big thing that can bring fashion and technology together. Computer scientists all around the world are trying to experiment with deep-learning techniques that can be used to virtually dress a 3D avatar (digital versions of humans). Developments in this field are being made in India too. Two researchers at

For many, the evolution of humans is a discipline of great interest and curiosity – a way of ascertaining who we are and where we come from. Hence, finding and naming our ancestors is necessary. The practice of assigning names is of significance in science for several reasons, primarily because it helps researchers spread all

A massive solar flare could create dazzling northern lights over parts of the US on Sunday, according to NASA. The space agency said a sun storm erupted on October 28 and sent a vast cloud of charged particles that should reach Earth on Halloween (Sunday, October 31). When these particles hit Earth’s atmosphere, they will

Microblogging site Twitter, which regularly tests new features ahead of their official rollout, has created a new way for some people to check out these new features before everyone else. Twitter has announced that subscribers to its paid Twitter Blue service will get early access to some new features under a new Labs banner. Like

After spending nearly half a year, every year, gathering and calculating carbon emissions data on spread sheets, Salesforce.com’s climate team was fed up. So in 2017 they built an app to crunch the numbers – and now they sell it for $4,000 (roughly Rs. 3 lakh) a month. As global companies prepare pledges to help

NASA’s main workhorse for deep-space observation has faced a new technical issue this week that has forced scientists to pull it into “safe mode”. The safe mode is designed to keep the Hubble Space Telescope, which has revealed several mysteries of outer space, stable and allow scientists to work on it to address whatever problem

NASA’s Chandra X-ray telescope has found hints of what could be the first planet discovered outside our Milky Way galaxy. The possible signal discovered is located in the Messier 51 galaxy, some 28 million light-years away from Earth. NASA’s Chandra Observatory has been designed in such a way that it can detect X-ray emissions from

With Winter coming, air pollution in India is going to once again hit crisis levels soon. At the individual level we can wear masks and use air purifiers in our homes, but more broadly, cities and municipalities have also been installing outdoor air purifiers over several years now — but do these actually work? Have

In a first, surgeons have successfully attached a pig’s kidney to a human and monitored the pinkish organ function normally for more than 50 hours. They hope this breakthrough could address donor organ shortages for life-saving transplants one day. While complex medical procedures similar to this have been done before on primates, it’s the first time

NASA said Friday it is now targeting February 2022 for the uncrewed lunar mission Artemis 1, the first step in America’s plan to return humans to the Moon later this decade. The space agency had initially wanted to launch the test flight by the end of this year, with astronauts on the ground by 2024

Governments all over the world are looking at energy security as a priority to power their industries, businesses, homes, and offices. But there are finite sources of energy and the technology to harness renewable energy is still decades away from a wider adoption. US-based company Radiant is trying to address this challenge by developing a

A woman had a potentially fatal experience in Canada recently. As she slept through the night a meteorite, a small meteorite pierced through her roof and came crashing on her pillow. It barely missed her head, but created a hole in the roof. The incident turned the light back on the question: What if a

Vaping e-cigarettes may not be useful in helping people quit smoking, a recent research suggests. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had earlier suggested that smokers could switch from puffing cigarettes to vaping e-cigarettes if they were unable to quit smoking. This came with one condition: smokers would have to completely switch

Astronomers have observed an accreting white dwarf abruptly lose and gain its brightness for the first time. White dwarfs are stars that have run out of their basic fuel: hydrogen. Usually, researchers have observed white dwarfs losing their brightness over days or months. Astronomers were studying the white dwarf binary system, TW Pictoris, and the

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