Science

Amazon said on Monday it had secured nine satellite launch vehicles from United Launch Alliance (ULA) to support the initial deployment of its broadband Internet initiative, Project Kuiper. Atlas V launch vehicles from ULA, a joint rocket venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin, is the first of many vehicles which will be used to deploy Amazon’s

China’s space port of Wenchang will build a $3-billion (roughly Rs. 22,490 crores) supercomputing centre by year-end to analyse data obtained from space, according to state media. With a planned investment of CNY 20 billion (roughly Rs. 23,100 crores), the supercomputing centre will provide big data services for industries including the aerospace and marine sectors

Godzilla Shark, a monster shark whose fossilised skeleton was discovered in New Mexico in 2013, has been named ‘Dracopristis Hoffmanorum’, or ‘Hoffman’s Dragon Shark’, by researchers. The fossils of the 6.7-foot-long shark that lived 300 million years ago were unearthed during a dig at the Manzano Mountains, about 50km from Albuquerque in New Mexico, by

NASA successfully flew the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars on Monday, according to data and images sent back to Earth. “Altimeter data confirms that Ingenuity has performed its first flight – the first flight of a powered aircraft on another planet,” announced an engineer in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as the control room cheered.  A short

NASA awarded billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX a $2.9 billion (roughly Rs. 21,616 crores) contract to build a spacecraft to bring astronauts to the moon as early as 2024, the agency said on Friday, picking it over Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and defense contractor Dynetics. Bezos and Musk – the world’s first and

Social media users were in for a treat recently, thanks to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s latest photos. The American space agency shared some exquisite images of Earth, giving us a look at the natural systems of the planet. The pictures were taken from the vantage point of the International Space Station (ISS)

While just the sight of a spider can get many of us jumping out of our skin, have you ever wondered what a spider’s web sounds like? Well, a new study shows that it could send a shiver down your spine with its characteristic reverberating tune. Markus Buehler, an engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute

Despite being the most evolved species, there are some things we humans simply cannot do. Like, change the size of our brain. Over the years, it was found that certain members of the animal kingdom possess the ability to increase their brain size. And now, a new study has revealed that Indian jumping ants can

NASA helicopter placed on Mars could make its first flight over the Red Planet within two days after a successful initial test of its rotors, the US space agency said Friday. The current plan for the first-ever attempt at powered, controlled flight on another planet is for the four-pound (1.8kg) helicopter, dubbed the Ingenuity, to take

Elon Musk’s Neuralink startup is developing a brain-machine interface that will enable users to control computers and smartphones directly from their brain. Founded in 2016, Neuralink is now demonstrating the progress it has made over the years by showing a macaque named Pager playing Pong video game using a N1 neural link chip. In the

A three-man crew docked at the international Space Station Friday after a flight honouring the 60th anniversary of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becoming the first person in space. A Soyuz capsule carrying Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei docked at 1105 GMT (4:35pm IST), footage broadcasted by NASA

The images capture drama billions of years ago in the early Universe – glinting galaxies, glowing with stars that have exploded into supernovas and blazing jets fired from black holes.  Europe’s giant LOFAR radio telescope has detected stars being born in tens of thousands of distant galaxies with unprecedented precision, in a series of studies

NASA’s Ingenuity mini-helicopter has been dropped on the surface of Mars in preparation for its first flight, the US space agency said. The ultra-light aircraft had been fixed to the belly of the Perseverance rover, which touched down on the Red Planet on February 18. “#MarsHelicopter touchdown confirmed!” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory tweeted Saturday. “Its

An uncrewed SpaceX Starship prototype rocket failed to land safely on Tuesday after a test launch from Boca Chica, Texas, and engineers were investigating, SpaceX said. “We do appear to have lost all the data from the vehicle,” SpaceX engineer John Insprucker said in a webcast video of the rocket’s flight test. “We’re going to

A college science professor and an aerospace data analyst were named on Tuesday to round out a four-member crew for a SpaceX launch into orbit planned later this year billed as the first all-civilian spaceflight in history. The two latest citizen astronauts were introduced at a news briefing livestreamed from the Kennedy Space Center in

A space technology company in southern Nevada, US, is suing NASA, claiming the space agency owes it more than $1 million (roughly Rs. 7.3 crores) for work done during months of space station air performance tests last year. A NASA public affairs official did not immediately respond Monday to a message about the Bigelow Aerospace

Vocalis Health is an Israel based AI healthtech company that says it has developed a new software that can analyse a person’s voice and use that to detect if they have COVID 19 or not. According to the company, vocal biomarkers from people’s recorded voices can be used to screen, detect, monitor and predict health

Alphabet’s Google said on Wednesday it had sealed agreements with various Italian publishers to offer access to some of their content on the US tech giant’s Showcase news platform. Google News Showcase is a global vehicle to pay news publishers for their content online and a new service that would allow partnering publishers to curate content

India and France are working on their third joint satellite mission, even as the bilateral space collaboration is entering into multiple domains, including human spaceflight programme, ISRO Chairman K Sivan said. Sivan, also Secretary in the Department of Space, said many French companies are keen to tap into opportunities thrown up by recent reforms injected