Junior Digest

Aug 29,2022:An engine problem forced NASA on Monday to postpone for at least four days the debut launch of the colossal rocketship it hopes will one day fly astronauts back to the moon, more than a half-century after Apollo’s last lunar mission. The U.S. space agency cited a problem on one of the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket’s main engines, as launch teams began a test that would have cooled the engines for liftoff. One of them would not cool as expected.

The delay was called at 08:35 a.m. EDT (1235 GMT), two minutes after the targeted launch time, as the 32-story-tall, rocket and its Orion capsule awaited liftoff from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. The mission, dubbed Artemis I, calls for a six-week, uncrewed test flight of Orion around the moon and back to Earth for a splashdown in the Pacific.

NASA did not give a new launch date for the two-stage rocket but said its first available opportunity was Friday, Sept. 2. Whether the agency sticks with that date depends on how quickly engineers can resolve the engine issue. The subsequent launch opportunity is Monday, Sept. 5.

Late-hour launch delays are routine in the space business, and Monday’s postponement was not an indication of a major setback for NASA or its primary contractors, Boeing Co for SLS and Lockheed Martin Corp for Orion. “We don’t launch until it’s right,” NASA chief Bill Nelson said in a webcast interview just after the liftoff was scrubbed. “It’s just illustrative that this is a very complicated machine, a very complicated system, and all those things have to work. And you don’t want to light the candle until it’s ready to go.”

Still, the delay was a disappointment to thousands of spectators who had gathered on the shores around Cape Canaveral, with binoculars in hand. Vice President Kamala Harris had just arrived at the space center, joining a throng of dignitaries and invited guests attending the event, shortly before the scrub was called.

BENGALURU, Nov 18,2022: India successfully launched its first privately developed rocket, the Vikram-S, on Friday, a milestone in the country’s effort to create a commercial space industry and to compete on cost.

The 545-kg rocket, developed by space startup Skyroot, took off from the Indian space agency’s launch site near Chennai and hit a peak altitude of 89.5 kilometers (km).

The rocket has the capability of reaching Mach 5 – five times the speed of sound – and carrying a payload of 83 kg to an altitude of 100 kilometers, the company said.
The Skyroot team had set a target of 80 km for its first launch, a benchmark some agencies define as the frontier of space. The Karman line – set by an international aeronautics body as defining the boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and space – is at 100 km altitude.

Video footage showed the rocket taking off from the space centre, leaving a plume of smoke and fire in its trail. It splashed down in the Bay of Bengal about 5 minutes after launch, officials said.

“I’m happy to announce the successful completion of Mission Prarambh, the beginning,” said Pawan Goenka, who chairs the Indian government agency that coordinates private-sector space activities.
Skyroot, which was started by Pawan Chandana and Bharath Daka, has set a target of cutting development costs by up to 90 percent versus existing platforms to launch small satellites.

It expects to achieve that cost savings by using a rocket architecture that can be assembled in less than 72 hours with composite materials. It plans launches capable of delivering satellites starting next year.

“Innovation and cost efficiency should be the two drivers for the industry. Cost efficiency has already been achieved, and now we should look at cutting edge technology,” Chandana said.
The Indian government has been pushing to develop a private space industry to complement its state-run space programme known for its affordable launches and missions.

India’s unmanned Mars mission in 2014 cost only $74 million, and made headlines for costing less than the Academy Award winnning film “Gravity”.

Until now, the state-run ISRO has had a monopoly on launching rockets in India.

The Skyroot rockets are named after Vikram Sarabhai, the Indian physicist and astronomer considered the father of India’s space programme.

Hyderabad-based Skyroot, founded in 2018 and backed by Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC, was the first space startup to sign an agreement to use Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) launch and test facilities after the government opened the door to private companies in 2020.

It has raised 5.26 billion rupees ($64.42 million) so far and employs about 200 people. Close to 100 people have been involved in its maiden launch project, the company said.

Aug 7,2022:ISRO Chairman S Somanath on Sunday informed the space agency’s maiden Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) suffered “data loss” at the terminal stage, although three stages “performed and separated,” and said the space agency was analysing the data to ascertain the status of the vehicle and the satellites.

SSLV-D1/EOS 02 was carrying an earth observation satellite and a student satellite.
ISRO’s maiden small satellite launch vehicle (SSLV), carrying earth observation satellite EOS-02 and co-passenger students satellite AzaadiSAT lifted off from this spaceport on Sunday. The SSLV-D1/EOS-02 mission by the Indian space agency is aimed at garnering a larger pie in the small launch vehicles market, as ite can place the satellites into Low Earth Orbit.
The SSLV can put payloads (mini, micro or nanosatellites) weighing upto 500 kg into the 500 km planar orbit, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said.
SSLV’s all stages performed as expected, but suffered data loss at terminal phase of the mission, said ISRO Chief Somanath.

Marc 25,2023:A large asteroid will safely zoom between Earth and the Moon on Saturday, a once-in-a-decade event that will be used as a training exercise for planetary defence efforts, according to the European Space Agency.

The asteroid, named 2023 DZ2, is estimated to be 40 to 70 metres (130 to 230 feet) wide, roughly the size of the Parthenon, and big enough to wipe out a large city if it hit our planet.

At 19:49 GMT on Saturday, it will come within a third of the distance from the Earth to the Moon, said Richard Moissl, the head of the ESA’s planetary defence office.

Though that is “very close”, there is nothing to worry about, he told AFP news agency.

Small asteroids fly past every day, but one of this size coming so close to Earth only happens about once every 10 years, he added.

The asteroid will pass 175,000km (109,000 miles) from Earth at a speed of 28,000 kilometres per hour (17,400 miles per hour). The Moon is roughly 385,000km (239,228 miles) away.

An observatory in La Palma, one of Spain’s Canary Islands, first spotted the asteroid on February 27.

Last week, the United Nations-endorsed International Asteroid Warning Network decided it would take advantage of the close look, carrying out a “rapid characterisation” of 2023 DZ2, Moissl said. That means astronomers around the world will analyse the asteroid with a range of instruments such as spectrometers and radars.

The goal is to find out just how much we can learn about such an asteroid in only a week, Moissl said. It will also serve as training for how the network “would react to a threat” possibly heading our way in the future, he added.

The asteroid will again swing past Earth in 2026, but poses no threat of impact for at least the next 100 years – which is how far out its trajectory has been calculated.

Aug 26,2022:NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the first-ever clear evidence of the presence of carbon dioxide in a distant planet’s atmosphere. The planet named WASP-39b is orbiting a Sun-like star and is around 700 light years away from us and was originally discovered back in 2011.

The latest discovery gives insights into the planet’s composition and findings from the study were published in the Nature science journal. Previously, NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have revealed the presence of water vapour, sodium, and potassium in the planet’s atmosphere.

According to NASA, WASP-39b is a hot gas giant similar to Jupiter in our solar system. But its mass is the same as that of Saturn, and it has a diameter 1.3 times greater than Jupiter’s. NASA notes that this is an extremely hot planet with temperatures of around 900 degrees Celsius, which also contributes to its puffiness. It orbits its star very closely, and it completes one revolution around its sun in just four Earth days. So yes, four days would be one a year on this particular planet.

Feb 01,2023:A green-hued comet is expected to be the most visible to stargazers on Wednesday as it shoots past Earth and the sun for the first time in about 50,000 years.

Discovered less than a year ago, the dirty snowball last passed near Earth during Neanderthal times, according to NASA.
The cosmic visitor will swing by our planet within 42 million kilometres (26 million miles) Wednesday before speeding away again, unlikely to return for millions of years.

This harmless comet already is visible in a clear northern night sky with binoculars and small telescopes, and possibly the naked eye in the darkest corners of the Northern Hemisphere.

It’s expected to brighten as it draws closer and rises higher over the horizon through the end of January, and is best seen in the predawn hours. By February 10, it will be near Mars, a good landmark.
Stargazers in the Southern Hemisphere will have to wait until next month for a glimpse.

Finding a remote location to avoid light pollution in populated areas is key to catching a nice view of the comet as it journeys past our planet heading away from the sun and back toward the solar system’s outer reaches.

While plenty of comets have graced the sky over the past year, “this one seems probably a little bit bigger and therefore a little bit brighter and it’s coming a little bit closer to the Earth’s orbit,” said NASA’s comet-and asteroid-tracking expert, Paul Chodas.
Nicknamed “dirty snowballs” by astronomers, comets are balls of ice, dust and rocks and wander towards the inner solar system when they’re dislodged from various gravitational forces, becoming more visible as they venture closer to the heat given off by the sun.

Fewer than a dozen comets are discovered each year by observatories around the world.
The green comet was discovered on March 2, 2022 by astronomers using the Zwicky Transient Facility, a wide-field camera at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in Palomar Mountain, California, the United States. That explains its official, cumbersome name: comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF).

Its greenish, emerald hue reflects the comet’s chemical composition – it is the result of a clash between sunlight and carbon-based molecules in the comet’s coma, the cloud around the nucleus that makes the comet appear fuzzy in the sky.

This comet last passed Earth at a time when Neanderthals still inhabited Eurasia, the human species was expanding its reach beyond Africa, big Ice Age mammals including mammoths and saber-toothed cats roamed the landscape, and northern Africa was a wet, fertile and rainy place.

The comet can provide clues about the primordial solar system because it formed during the solar system’s early stages, according to California Institute of Technology physics professor Thomas Prince.

NASA plans to observe the comet with its James Webb Space Telescope, which could provide clues about the solar system’s formation.

The Virtual Telescope Project at the Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory in Ceccano, Italy will have a live feed accessible here.

The comet — a time capsule from the emerging solar system 4.5 billion years ago — came from what’s known as the Oort cloud well beyond Pluto. This deep-freeze haven for comets is believed to stretch more than one-quarter of the way to the next star.

While comet ZTF originated in our solar system, we can’t be sure it will stay there, NASA’s Chodas said. If it gets booted out of the solar system, it will never return, he added.

But don’t fret if you miss it.

“In the comet business, you just wait for the next one because there are dozens of these,” Chodas said. “And the next one might be bigger, might be brighter, might be closer.”

London,Nov 25,2022: The European Space Agency on Wednesday named the first ever “parastronaut” in a major step towards allowing people with physical disabilities to work and live in space.

The 22-nation agency said it had selected former British Paralympic sprinter John McFall as part of a new generation of 17 recruits picked for astronaut training.

He will take part in a feasibility study designed to allow ESA to assess the conditions needed for people with disabilities to take part in future missions.

He will join five new career astronauts and 11 reserves in training after ESA replenished its astronaut ranks for the first time since 2009.

ESA posted openings last year for people fully capable of passing its usual stringent psychological, cognitive and other tests who are only prevented from becoming astronauts due to the constraints of existing hardware in light of their disability.
It received 257 applications for the role of astronaut with a disability, a parallel role that it terms “parastronaut”.

Following a motorcycle accident that led to his right leg being amputated at the age of 19, McFall went on to win the 100-metres Bronze Medal at the Beijing Paralympic Games in 2008.
McFall works as a trauma and orthopaedic specialist in the south of England, the ESA said.

Dec22,2022:NASA announced that its InSight lander, designed to understand the geologic life story of Mars, has completed its mission on the Red Planet. The spacecraft relied on solar power, and after four years on Mars, its sunlight-collecting panels have built up too much dust to generate enough power to run the lander. For months now, the InSight team have been expecting the lander to fall silent. Now, the robot has missed two calls home; scientists last heard from the robot on Dec. 15. NASA will keep listening, but doesn’t expect to hear anything more from the lander.

“We’ve actually been able to do a whole lot more than what we claimed and promised to do,” Bruce Banerdt, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California and principal investigator of the InSight mission, told Space.com earlier this year. “I feel like, looking back, this has been an enormously successful mission.”
InSight launched in May 2018 and landed six months later; for four years, the $814 million robot quietly listened to the Red Planet’s rumblings.
Unlike its rover siblings Curiosity and Perseverance, which focus on evaluating the Red Planet’s habitability over time, InSight was designed to peer deep inside the planet, measuring the layers from the surface down to the molten core. The mission was also meant to track current geologic activity by feeling for marsquakes.

WASHINGTON, July 18,2023: Scientists for the past 15 years have been looking for evidence of a type of star only hypothesized but never observed – one powered not by the fusion of atoms like the sun and other ordinary stars but by mysterious stuff called dark matter.

Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope’s ability to peer back to the dawn of the universe, the first good candidates to be “dark stars” have been identified.

The three objects spotted by Webb, which was launched in 2021 and began collecting data last year, were initially identified last December as some of the universe’s earliest-known galaxies but, according to researchers, instead might actually be humongous dark stars.

Dark matter, invisible material whose presence is known mainly based on its gravitational effects at a galactic scale, would be a small but crucial ingredient in dark stars. These stars are described as made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium – the two elements present during the universe’s infancy – with 0.1% of their mass in the form of dark matter. But self-annihilating dark matter would be their engine.

Dark matter is invisible to us – it does not produce or directly interact with light – but is thought to account for about 85% of the universe’s matter, with the remaining 15% comprising normal matter like stars, planets, gas, dust and Earthly stuff like pizza and people.

Dark stars would be able to achieve a mass at least a million times greater than the sun and a luminosity at least a billion times greater, with a diameter roughly ten times the distance between Earth and the sun.

“They’re big puffy beasts,” said Katherine Freese, a theoretical astrophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin and senior author of the research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“They are made of atomic matter and powered by the little bit of dark matter that’s inside them,” Freese added.

Unlike ordinary stars, they would be able to gain mass by accumulating gas falling into them in space.

“They can continue to accrete the surrounding gas almost indefinitely, reaching supermassive status,” said Colgate University astrophysicist and study lead author Cosmin Ilie.

They would not have been as hot as the universe’s first generation of ordinary stars. It was the nuclear fusion occurring in the cores of those stars that spawned elements heavier than hydrogen and helium.

The three objects pegged as potential dark stars date to early in the universe’s history – one from 330 million years after the Big Bang event that got the cosmos going 13.8 billion years ago, and the others from 370 million years and 400 million years after the Big Bang.

Based on the Webb data, these objects could be either early galaxies or dark stars, Freese said.

“One supermassive dark star is as bright as an entire galaxy, so it could be one or the other,” Freese added.

While there is not enough data to make a definitive judgment about these three, Freese said, Webb may be able to obtain fuller data on other similarly primordial objects that could provide “smoking gun” evidence of a dark star.

Conditions in the early universe may have been conducive to formation of dark stars, with high dark matter densities at the locations of star-forming clouds of hydrogen and helium. Such conditions are highly unlikely today.

Freese and two colleagues first proposed the existence of dark stars in 2008, basing the name on the 1960s Grateful Dead song “Dark Star.”

“It would be really super exciting to find a new type of star with a new kind of heat source,” Freese said. “It might lead to the first dark matter particles being detected. And then you can learn about the properties of dark matter particles by studying a variety of dark stars of different masses.”

Dec 13,2022:US government scientists have reportedly made a breakthrough in harnessing the much sought-after fusion energy power source.

It’s believed fusion energy, the same reaction that powers the sun, could one day provide a limitless and cleaner alternative to fossil fuels.

The Financial Times today reported three separate sources confirmed a recent experiment at the federal Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California yielded successful results.
The experiment reportedly produced a net gain in energy produced for the first time since observations began back in the 1950s.

The Financial Times said the fusion reaction, “produced about 2.5 megajoules of energy, which was about 120 per cent of the 2.1 megajoules of energy in the lasers, the people with knowledge of the results said, adding that the data was still being analysed”.

The US department of energy told the news outlet it will announce “a major scientific breakthrough” at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on Tuesday (local time, Wednesday NZT).

“Initial diagnostic data suggests another successful experiment at the National Ignition Facility,” the lab said.

“However, the exact yield is still being determined and we can’t confirm that it is over the threshold at this time. That analysis is in process, so publishing the information…before that process is complete would be inaccurate.”

The Financial Times reports the results are being widely shared behind the scenes in the scientific world.

Dec 12,2022:A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched on December 11 from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, carrying into space the first ever Arab-built lunar spacecraft.

The Rashid Rover was built by Dubai’s Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC), in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and is being delivered by the HAKUTO-R lander, engineered by Japanese lunar exploration company ispace. If the landing is successful, HAKUTO-R will also become the first commercial spacecraft ever to make a controlled landing on the moon.

The mission is taking a low energy route to the moon and is due to arrive around April 2023. Once there, the rover will spend one lunar day (equivalent to 14.75 days on Earth) on the surface, conducting its main operations. It will spend a second lunar day conducting secondary operations, to check whether the rover will survive the moon’s tough nighttime environment, before decommissioning.
Scheduled to touch down in the Atlas crater the northeast part of the moon, the rover has been designed to withstand the lunar night, when temperatures can reach as low as -183°C, or -297.4°F.

The Rashid Rover, named after the late Sheikh Rashid Al Saeed, the former ruler of Dubai, will analyze the plasma on the lunar surface and conduct experiments to understand more about lunar dust. Razor-sharp lunar dust particles can stick to and erode spacesuits and equipment, causing operational problems for astronauts.

Chennai, July 31,2023: Heralding a major milestone in India’s third moon mission, the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft moved out of the earth orbits and was successfully slinged into the Lunar Orbit on Monday midnight and is heading towards the moon.
With this challenging accomplishment, the spacecraft, has moved yet another step closer in the mission ahead of soft landing on the Lunar surface that will happen in the third week of August. In a tweet, ISRO said “Chandrayaan-3 completes its orbits around the Earth and heads towards the Moon.”
“A successful perigee-firing performed at ISTRAC, ISRO has injected the spacecraft into the translunar orbit”, it said.”Next stop: the Moon–As it arrives at the moon, the Lunar-Orbit Insertion (LOI) is planned for Aug 5, 2023″, ISRO said.
“The coming 23 days are very crucial and the ISRO scientists will be monitoring the spacecraft round the clock from the ground stations”, ISRO sources said after the successful entry of Chandrayaan-3 into the Lunar phase”, ISRO sources.
ISRO sources said the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft was successfully injected into the TransLunar Injection (TLI) orbit by firing the onboard thruster motors from the ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bengaluru.

Having entered the Lunar orbit, the spacecraft’s orbit will be further manuevred for the soft landing on August 23 evening to explore the hitherto unexplored south pole region of the moon.

The success of the soft landing would propel India to join a select group of space faring nations to achieve this historic milestone. Only US, the then Soviet Union and China have achieved this feat so far.

India too nearly achieved it in its maiden attempt when it launched Chandrayaan-2 in July 2019, before the lander
crash landed very close to the landing spot, making the mission about 99.99 per cent success.

Sriharikota (AP), July 14,2023: India’s heavy lift launch vehicle LVM3-M4 on Friday successfully launched third Lunar exploratory mission Chandrayaan-3 in the intended orbit. After a 25.5 hour countdown, the 43.5 m tall launch vehicle, with a lift off mass of 642 tonnes, took off from the Second Launch Pad at 2.35 p.m from the SHAR Range.
Applause and cheers swept through mission control at Satish Dhawan Space Centre, where the ISRO engineers and scientists celebrated as they monitored the launch of the spacecraft.

Thousands of Indians cheered outside the mission control centre and waved the national flag as they watched the craft rise into the sky.

“Congratulations India. Chandrayaan-3 has started its journey towards the moon,” ISRO Director S P Somanath said shortly after the launch.
Only three other space agencies – the United States, the former Soviet Union and China – have touched down a lander on the moon’s surface.

None has landed near the lunar south pole.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is currently visiting France, tweeted that the mission was carrying the “hopes and dreams of our nation”.
The third Chandrayaan includes a two-metre-tall lander designed to deploy a rover near the lunar south pole, where it is expected to remain functional for two weeks running a series of experiments.

WASHINGTON, June 29,2023: Scientists on Wednesday unveiled evidence that gravitational waves, the ripples in the fabric of space-time predicted by Albert Einstein more than a century ago, are permeating the universe at low frequencies – creating a cosmic background hum.

The new findings show that space is awash with these gravitational waves, which oscillate over years or longer and appear to originate primarily from pairs of supermassive black holes spiraling together before merging.

“Gravitational waves are created by astronomically dense objects in our universe, usually in orbit around each other. The gravitational waves actually stretch and compress space-time itself as they travel through the universe,” said Oregon State University astrophysicist Jeff Hazboun, a member of the scientific collaboration that conducted the research and lead author of one of the papers describing the findings in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Einstein in 1916 proposed the existence of gravitational waves as an outgrowth of his ground-breaking general theory of relativity, which depicted gravity as the distortion of space and time by matter. Until their detection in 2016, scientists had found only indirect evidence of their existence, beginning in the 1970s.

Objects called pulsars – the extremely dense cores of exploded stars that spin at the speed of kitchen blenders – were crucial in the new research. Sixty-eight pulsars were used in gathering the evidence.

“We see the passage of the gravitational waves as changes in the arrival time of pulses from an array of pulsars in our galaxy,” Hazboun said.
An artistic interpretation of an array of pulsars being affected by gravitational ripples produced by a supermassive black hole binary in a distant galaxy, in this handout image released June 28, 2023. Aurore Simonnet/NANOGrav Collaboration/Handout via REUTERS

The gravitational wave signal was observed in 15 years’ worth of data obtained by the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) Physics Frontiers Center (PFC), a collaboration of more than 190 scientists from the United States and Canada.

The researchers described the universe’s gravitational wave background as the equivalent of hearing the hum of a large group of people talking at a party, without being able to distinguish any individual voice.

Astronomers long have relied upon studying light to learn more about the cosmos, but that approach has limitations because it does not offer insight into many aspects of the universe. Gravitational waves allow for a more robust examination of the universe, as do ghostly subatomic particles called neutrinos.

The discovery was announced seven years after researchers announced that they had first detected the existence of gravitational waves generated by two distant black holes – extraordinarily dense objects with gravity so strong that not even light can escape. The motion of black holes and other massive objects can cause gravitational waves.

That research involved what is called the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).

“We have solid evidence for a hum of gravitational waves in a new band of the gravitational wave spectrum. These frequencies are 10-12 orders of magnitude smaller than those detected by LIGO, and have wavelengths light years long,” Hazboun said.

“The most vanilla explanation of these gravitational waves is an ensemble of supermassive black hole binaries (black holes orbiting each other) in our cosmic neighborhood. Other explanations include interesting new physics from near the Big Bang,” Hazboun added, referring to the event that marked the origin of the universe about 13.8 billion years ago.

Sept 17,2022:NASA has taken to its Artemis blog to announce new dates for the Space Launch System’s (SLS) upcoming tests and potential launch windows for the Artemis I mission.

A cryogenic demonstration test is slated for no earlier than Wednesday, September 21st. The first flight of the integrated SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft will occur no earlier than September 27th, with a potential backup date being reviewed for October 2nd. The backup launch window would bring the first flight of NASA’s Artemis program within a day of the agency’s mission with SpaceX to launch Crew-5 to the International Space Station (ISS).

The Crew-5 mission is targeted for no earlier than 12:45 p.m. EDT (16:45 UTC) on October 3rd and will launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where Artemis I will also be launching. Teams will therefore be planning and preparing both launches simultaneously if the backup launch window for Artemis I is needed. After Crew-5 makes it to the ISS, Crew-4 will return shortly after that.

NASA is sure that the upcoming dates will provide sufficient time to prepare for and conduct the cryogenic demonstration test and subsequently prepare for the launch just under a week later. Artemis I teams have repaired the area responsible for the hydrogen leak that caused previous launch attempts to be scrubbed, with testing of the repairs to follow ahead of the cryogenic demonstration test, where conditions more closely resembling those at launch will be achieved to verify the repairs’ effectiveness.

Washington, Aug 5,2023: NASA announced Friday that it has reestablished full communications with the Voyager 2 space probe after losing contact with the spacecraft last week.

“NASA has reestablished full communications with Voyager 2. The agency’s Deep Space Network facility in Canberra, Australia, sent the equivalent of an interstellar ‘shout’ more than 12.3 billion miles (19.9 billion kilometers) to Voyager 2, instructing the spacecraft to reorient itself and turn its antenna back to Earth. With a one-way light time of 18.5 hours for the command to reach Voyager, it took 37 hours for mission controllers to learn whether the command worked. At 12:29 a.m. EDT on Aug. 4, the spacecraft began returning science and telemetry data, indicating it is operating normally and that it remains on its expected trajectory,” the space agency said in a statement on the website.

NASA said that contact with the probe was lost in late July after a series of planned commands were sent to the probe, causing the spacecraft’s antenna to point away from Earth and resulting in the loss of communications and data transmission.

The agency said on August 1 that its Deep Space Network, using multiple antennas, had been able to detect a signal from the probe, which confirmed that the aircraft was operational.

Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched in September 1977. Both Voyagers are the farthest from Earth and the longest-operated spacecraft. Voyager 1, which is almost 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth now, continues to operate normally, NASA added.

Sept 27,2022:In its first effort to move an asteroid in space, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the first planetary defence technology demonstration in history, successfully struck its asteroid target on Monday.

“IMPACT SUCCESS! Watch the asteroid Dimorphos successfully crash with the spacecraft #DARTMIssion’s DRACO Camera as it is the size of a football stadium and presents no threat to Earth “NASA posted a tweet on Twitter.

According to a news agency, the primary goal of the mission, which NASA referred to as “humanity’s first test of planetary defence,”, was to reroute the asteroid so that it would orbit Didymos more closely.

The asteroid system served as the ideal test bed for kinetic impact, which would be required if an asteroid ever threatens to strike Earth.

According to the news agency, the procedure involved a briefcase-sized CubeSat joining DART and flying over Dimorphos three minutes after impact to take pictures and videos that will be transmitted back to Earth in the coming weeks and months.

According to NASA, the project is known as the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART).

Dimorphos is the smaller of two asteroids in a double-asteroid system, according to NASA, with a diameter of roughly 525 feet (160 metres). Every 11 hours and 55 minutes, the smaller asteroid Dimorphos circles the bigger Didymos.

The DART spacecraft is intended to crash directly with Dimorphos in order to change its orbit and reduce the amount of time it takes for the tiny asteroid to circle Didymos.

DART will have a kinetic energy of 10 billion joules when it collides with the asteroid’s surface. The impact will result in the formation of a crater and the blasting out of debris known as ejecta. According to the space agency, NASA anticipates receiving pictures of the hit in the days after it occurs from a CubeSat that DART will launch prior to impact.

The search for undiscovered asteroids continues despite the fact that there are no known objects that pose a hazard to Earth at the moment.

NASA is constantly looking into and making plans for measures to stop or lessen the repercussions of a potential impact, should one be found.

Similar methods can be used to divert an asteroid or comet away from our planet in the future if it is determined that it is dangerous for the Earth by applying the information obtained from this demonstration.

Chennai, July 17,2023: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has successfully performed the second Orbit raising manoeuvre of third Lunar Mission Chandrayaan-3, which was launched from the spaceport of Sriharikota on Friday.
After the first orbit raising manoeuvre (Earthbound firing-1), was performed by the ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bengaluru, the second orbit-raising manoeuvre (Earth- bound apogee firing) was performed successfully on Monday.
The spacecraft is now in 41762 km x 173 km orbit.The next firing is planned for tomorrow between 2 pm and 3 pm.
ISRO said the spacecraft’s health is normal. In a mission update, ISRO said “the second orbit-raising maneuver
(Earth-bound apogee firing) is performed successfully.” “The spacecraft is now in 41603 km x 226 km orbit. The next firing is planned for tomorrow between 2 and 3 pm IST”, ISRO said.

The Space agency will be performing two more firing till July 31 after which the trans lunar insertion is planned on August 1.
The Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft was successfully launched by ISRO’s heaviest launch vehicle LVM3-M4 and after a flight duration of about 16 minutes, it was precisely placed in an elliptic parking orbit of 36,500 km x 170 km.
ISRO is planning the technically challenging soft landing of the Chandryaaan-3 spacecraft in the lunar surface at 5.47 p.m. on August 23, ISRO Chairman S.Somanath said after the launch at Sriharikota.
The Chandrayaan-3 consists of an indigenous lander module (LM), propulsion module (PM), and a rover with the objective of developing and demonstrating new technologies required for future inter-planetary missions.
The success of Chandrayaan-3 will make it the surface mission closest to the lunar south pole to date, a region of the moon that has been found to be geologically unique and host to spots in permanent shadow.
A perfect soft landing on the Moon’s surface will make India the fourth country to accomplish this feat, thereby joining a select group of spacefaring nations.
Only USA, the then Soviet Union and China have achieved this feat. India too nearly achieved in its maiden attempt when it launched Chandryaan-2 in July 2019, before the lander crash landed very close to the landing spot, making the mission about 99.99 per cent success.

Through Chandrayaan-3 mission, ISRO is crossing new frontiers by demonstrating soft landing on lunar surface by its lunar module and demonstrate roving on the lunar terrain.
It is expected to be supportive to ISRO’s future interplanetary missions.
ISRO said Chandrayaan-3 is a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2 to demonstrate end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface.

Chennai, June 28 ,2023: The launch of India’s third Lunar mission Chandrayaan-3 will take place using the heaviest rocket LVM-3 from the spaceport of Sriharikota at 2.30 p.m. on July 13.
ISRO sources said the launch is expected to take place from the Second Launch Pad. The GSLV-Mk3 launcher (LVM-3) will place the Chandrayaan-3 integrated module in an Elliptic Parking Orbit (EPO) of size 170 x 36500 km.
The payloads of Chandrayaan-3 had already been taken to the SHAR Range, for mandatory before integrating them with the Launch vehicle.
This will be a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2 whose lander-rover configuration and the payloads aboard them after ‘Vikram’ crashed on the lunar surface while attempting a soft landing on the Lunar surface.
Chandrayaan-3 will demonstrate end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface.
ISRO in its website said “Chandrayaan-3 is a follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2 to demonstrate end-to-end capability in safe landing and roving on the lunar surface.”
It consists of Lander and Rover configuration. It will be launched by LVM3 from SDSC SHAR, Sriharikota.
The propulsion module will carry the lander and rover configuration till 100 km lunar orbit.
The propulsion module has Spectro-polarimetry of Habitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) payload to study the spectral and Polari metric measurements of Earth from the lunar orbit.
The Lander payloads were Radio Anatomy of Moon Bound Hypersensitive ionosphere and Atmosphere (RAMBHA), Chandra’s Surface Thermo physical Experiment (ChaSTE), Instrument for Lunar Seismic Activity (ILSA),Laser Retroreflector Array (LRA), while Rover paylods are Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS), Laser Induced Breakdown
Spectroscope (LIBS) Propulsion Module–Spectro-polarimetry of HAbitable Planet Earth (SHAPE) ChaSTE will measure the thermal conductivity and temperature; ILSA is for measuring the seismicity around the landing site;
Langmuir Probe (LP) to estimate the plasma density and its variations.
A passive Laser Retroreflector Array from NASA is accommodated for lunar laser ranging studies.Rover payloads Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) and Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscope (LIBS) for deriving the elemental composition in the vicinity of landing site.
Chandrayaan-3 consists of an indigenous Lander module (LM),Propulsion module (PM) and a Rover with an objective of
developing and demonstrating new technologies required for Inter planetary missions.
The Lander will have the capability to soft land at a specified lunar site and deploy the Rover which will carry out in-situ chemical analysis of the lunar surface during the course of its mobility.
The Lander and the Rover have scientific payloads to carry out experiments on the lunar surface. The main function of PM is to carry the LM from launch vehicle injection till final lunar 100 km circular polar orbit and separate the LM from PM.
Apart from this, the Propulsion Module also has one scientific payload as a value addition which will be operated post separation of Lander Module.
The mission objectives of Chandrayaan-3 was to demonstrate Safe and Soft Landing on Lunar Surface, demonstrate Rover roving on the moon and To conduct in-situ scientific experiments.
To achieve the mission objectives, several advanced technologies are present in Lander such as, Altimeters, Velocimeters, Inertial Measurement, Propulsion System, Navigation, Guidance & Control (NGC) and Hazard Detection and Avoidance.
As part of demonstrating these advanced technologies in earth condition, several Lander special tests were carried out successfully.
The tests included Integrated Cold Test for the demonstration of Integrated Sensors & Navigation performance test using helicopter as test platform, Integrated Hot test – for the demonstration of closed loop performance test with sensors, actuators and NGC using Tower crane as test platform Lander Leg mechanism performance test on a lunar simulant test bed simulating different touch down conditions.

Chennai, July 23,2023: The launch of PSLV-C56 carrying DS-SAR satellite, along with six co-passengers from the first launch-pad of SDSC-SHAR, Sriharikota, is tentatively scheduled towards the end of this month.
This exclusive commercial launch is likely to take place next month. PSLV-C56 is configured in its core-alone mode, similar to that of C55.
It would launch DS-SAR, a 360 kg satellite into a Near-equatorial Orbit (NEO) at 5 degrees inclination and 535 km altitude.The DS-SAR satellite is developed under a partnership between DSTA (representing the Government of Singapore) and ST Engineering. Once deployed and operational, it will be used to support the satellite imagery requirements of various agencies within the Government of Singapore.
ST Engineering will use it for multi-modal and higher responsiveness imagery and geospatial services for their commercial customers.
DS-SAR carries a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) payload developed by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI). This allows the DS-SAR to provide for all-weather day and night coverage, and capable of imaging at 1m-resolution at full polarimetry.
The co-passengers are: VELOX-AM, a 23 kg technology demonstration microsatellite; ARCADE Atmospheric Coupling and Dynamics Explorer (ARCADE), an experimental satellite; SCOOB-II , a 3U nanosatellite flying a technology demonstrator payload; NuLIoN by NuSpace, an advanced 3U nanosatellite enabling seamless IoT connectivity in both
urban & remote locations; Galassia-2, a 3U nanosatellite that will be orbiting at low earth orbit and ORB-12 STRIDER–satellite is developed under an International collaboration.