Science

The US Department of Defense (DoD) announced on May 3 that it is launching a formal evaluation into the Pentagon’s actions on what the military calls Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). The office of the DoD inspector general issued a memo a few days ago, announcing the plan and stated that it would audit how the

NASA’s Perseverance rover has for the first time captured the low-pitched whirring of the Ingenuity helicopter’s blades as it flies through the rarefied Martian atmosphere. The space agency on Friday released new footage shot by the six-wheeled robot of its rotorcraft companion making its fourth flight on April 30 — this time accompanied by an

A new study has revealed that a tiny, carnivorous dinosaur, which had an exceptional low-light vision and whose hearing ability was as good as an owl’s, hunted its prey at night. Measuring only 2 feet, the three-toed dinosaur species named Shuvuuia had large eyes and longer cochlea — the part of the inner ear canal

Remnants of China’s largest rocket launched last week are expected to plunge back through the atmosphere late Saturday or early Sunday, a US federally funded space-focused research and development centre said. China’s foreign ministry said on Friday that most debris from the rocket will be burned up on re-entry and is highly unlikely to cause any

Three Indian-American CEOs Sundar Pichai from Google, Punit Renjen from Deloitte, and Shantanu Narayen from Adobe have joined the steering committee of the Global Task Force on Pandemic Response, which is overseeing an unprecedented corporate sector initiative to help India successfully fight COVID19. The names of the three Indian-American CEOs were added to the list

Four astronauts just returned from the International Space Station described on Thursday their reentry into Earth’s atmosphere and ocean splashdown after more than 160 days in space. A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying the crew back to Earth splashed down off Florida early Sunday in NASA’s first nighttime ocean landing in more than 50 years.

NASA astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American to travel to space 60 years ago on May 5. The space research organisation honoured Shepard and his mission with a special page on its website. The year 1961 was extremely crucial as the United States and the Soviet Union — the two dominant superpowers at the

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will send its first crew to space on July 20 and is offering one of the seats to the winner of an online auction, the company said Wednesday. The trip will last a total of ten minutes, four of which passengers will spend above the Karman line that marks the recognised

Researchers have identified fossil bone fragments of sauropod dinosaurs dating back to about 100 million years from an area around West Khasi Hills District in Meghalaya. The yet-to-be-published findings were made during a recent field trip by researchers from the Geological Survey of India’s Palaeontology division in North-East. The GSI researchers noted that this is

SpaceX has received more than 500,000 preorders for its Starlink satellite Internet service and anticipates no technical problems meeting the demand, founder Elon Musk said on Tuesday. “Only limitation is high density of users in urban areas,” Musk tweeted, responding to a post from a CNBC reporter that said the $99 (roughly Rs. 7,300) deposits

Two German researchers got down to answer an easy query: What makes a great bird photo? But to find the answer, they had to collect over 20,000 photos of birds from nine of the largest bird accounts on Instagram with their corresponding data. The result was startling. They found that the bird image most liked

NASA’s Hubble telescope has shared a spectacular image of an interaction between two “doomed” stars which created a sort of diamond necklace in space, saying that the Sun-like stars were separated by only several million miles and so appeared as a single bright dot in the centre of the image. NASA said the Hubble Space

A few days ago, a couple in Las Vegas hired a team of workers to construct a pool in their backyard. Just when the team started digging, the couple — Matthew Perkins and his wife — joked among themselves that maybe they would find a dinosaur for them and it would pay for the pool.

Shiny satellites and space junk orbiting Earth may have increased the brightness of the night sky by more than 10 percent above the natural light levels, a new study has found, and further stated that these objects in the sky could also pose a threat to our viewing of the universe. The research, published in

The International Space Station (ISS), on Thursday, shared a collection of photographs, featuring the ‘Super Moon’. This celestial event occurs when the Moon is at its closest point to the Earth and at the same time is full. As a result, the Moon looks larger and brighter than other days. Also known as the ‘Pink

The neem tree growing outside my house is a shape-shifter. Every year, without fail, in the cool dry winter its leaves become tired and yellow-brown, and sometimes fall off completely. Just as the weather turns a bit warmer, heralding the summer, the neem miraculously becomes green again. Then the shy white flowers emerge, hiding in

After proving powered, controlled flight is possible on the Red Planet, NASA’s Mars Ingenuity helicopter has new orders: scout ahead of the Perseverance rover to assist in its search for past signs of microbial life. The next phase extends the rotocraft’s mission beyond the original month-long technology demonstration. Now, the goal is to assess how

US space agency NASA has told Elon Musk’s SpaceX to halt work under a contract it won to develop a lunar spacecraft, pending the outcome of challenges by rival bidders at the US Government Accountability Office, the agency said on Friday. NASA’s decision means SpaceX has to stop any work specifically related to the Moon

Scientists say they have been able to resolve a long-standing controversy about an extinct horned crocodile that lived among humans in Madagascar, an island country in the Indian Ocean, saying this particular crocodile, Voay Robustus, was closely related to the modern-day “true” crocodiles but on a separate branch of the crocodile family tree. Based on

NASA’s Mars Ingenuity helicopter missed its fourth scheduled flight on Thursday, with the space agency blaming a software glitch and vowing to try again the next day. “The helicopter is safe and in good health,” said a statement, adding the rotorcraft had failed to transition to “flight mode.”  The team plans to attempt the flight