Junior Digest

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.

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.

New Delhi , December 16,2021: A total number of 27 satellite missions and 25 launch vehicle missions were successfully accomplished during the last five years from April 2016 to March 2021, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said on Wednesday.
In reply to a question in the Lok Sabha today, Singh informed that in addition, 286 commercial satellites from domestic as well as foreign customers and eight student satellites from Indian universities were also launched during the aforementioned period.

“Some of the major space missions include a first operational flight of India’s heavy-lift launch vehicle GSLV Mk-III which placed India’s second lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2 into orbit; Advanced Cartography satellite, Cartosat-3; completion of NavIC constellation; launch of South Asia Satellite; launch of heaviest and most-advanced high throughput communication satellite, GSAT-11 and launch of record 104 satellites in a single PSLV flight,” said the Union Minister
Apart from these, three technology demonstrators namely Scramjet engine, Re-Usable Launch Vehicle and test for Crew Escape System were also successfully demonstrated during this period, he added.
Singh said that the Department of Space has charted out short-term and long-term plans in the areas of Space Transportation Systems, Satellite Communication and Navigation, Earth Observation, Space Sciences and Planetary Exploration, Capacity Building and Space-based applications.

Mar 26,2022: NASA declared that he number of confirmed exoplanets has just exceeded the 5,000 mark.The first planet to orbit a star outside our solar system was discovered on 21 Mar In 1995, almost 30 years back. The account is held by NASA’s Exoplanet Archive, which records the discoveries of these bodies that appear in peer-reviewed scientific articles that have been confirmed by multiple detection methods or analytical techniques. The “planetary odometer” surpassed 5,000 today thanks to the latest batch of 65 exoplanets added to the NASA archive. The first planet detected in a Sun-like star, in 1995, was 51 Pegasi b, located 50 light-years from Earth. It is a gas giant with half the mass of Jupiter in an extremely close orbit to its star, so its year lasts only four days. The people responsible for the discovery were the Swiss Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz, who in 2019 won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their contribution to the understanding of the evolution of the universe and the place of the Earth in the cosmos The more than 5,000 planets found so far include small rocky worlds like Earth, gas giants many times larger than Jupiter, and “hot Jupiter” in scorchingly close orbits around their stars, NASA recalled. There are also so-called “Super-Earths”, which are possible rocky worlds larger than ours, and “mini-Neptunes”, as well as planets that orbit around two stars at once and others that continue to circle collapsed remains of dead stars. “It’s not just a number”, according to the scientific director of the archive and researcher at the NASA Institute of Exoplanet Sciences, Jessie Christiansen, because “each of them is a new world, a totally new planet” that he knows nothing about.

GREENBELT, Md., July 13,2022: NASA on Tuesday drew back the curtain on billions of years of cosmic evolution with the inaugural batch of photos from the largest, most powerful observatory ever launched to space, saying the luminous imagery showed the telescope exceeds expectations.

The first full-color, high-resolution pictures from the James Webb Space Telescope, designed to peer farther than before with greater clarity to the dawn of the universe, were hailed by NASA as milestone marking a new era of astronomical exploration.
Nearly two decades in the making and built under contract for NASA by aerospace giant Northrop Grumman Corp , the $9 billion infrared telescope was launched on Dec. 25, 2021. It reached its destination in solar orbit nearly 1 million miles from Earth a month later.

With Webb finely tuned after months spent remotely aligning its mirrors and calibrating its instruments, scientists will embark on a competitively selected agenda exploring the evolution of galaxies, life cycle of stars, atmospheres of distant exoplanets, and moons of our outer solar system.

“All of us are just blown away,” Amber Straughn, Webb deputy project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said among a panel of experts who briefed reporters following the big reveal.

Whoops and hollers from a sprightly “cheer team” welcomed some 300 scientists, telescope engineers, politicians and senior officials from NASA and its international partners into a packed and auditorium at Goddard for the official unveiling.
“I didn’t know I was coming to a pep rally,” NASA Administrator James Nelson said from the stage, enthusing that Webb’s “every image is a discovery.”

The event was simulcast to watch parties of astronomy enthusiasts worldwide, from Bhopal, India, to Vancouver, British Columbia.

The first photos, which took weeks to render from raw telescope data, were selected by NASA to show off Webb’s capabilities and foreshadow science missions ahead.

The crowning debut image, previewed on Monday by U.S. President Biden but displayed with greater fanfare on Tuesday, was a “deep field” photo of a distant galaxy cluster, SMACS 0723, revealing the most detailed glimpse of the early universe recorded to date.

At least one faint galaxy measured among the thousands in the image is nearly 95% as old as the Big Bang, the theoretical flashpoint that set the expansion of the known universe in motion some 13.8 billion years ago, NASA said.

Among the four other Webb subjects getting their closeups on Tuesday were two enormous clouds of gas and dust blasted into space by stellar explosions to form incubators for new stars – the Carina Nebula and the Southern Ring Nebula, each thousands of light years away from Earth.

The collection also included fresh images of another galaxy cluster known as Stephan’s Quintet, first discovered in 1877, which encompasses several galaxies NASA described as “locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters.”

Apart from the imagery, NASA presented Webb’s first spectrographic analysis of a Jupiter-sized exoplanet more than 1,100 light years away – revealing the molecular signatures of filtered light passing through its atmosphere, including the presence of water vapor. Scientists have raised the possibility of eventually detecting water on the surface of smaller, rockier Earth-like exoplanets in the future.

‘PIECE OF ART’
Built to view its subjects chiefly in the infrared spectrum, Webb is about 100 times more sensitive than its 30-year-old predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, which operates mainly at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths.

The much larger light-collecting surface of Webb’s primary mirror – an array of 18 hexagonal segments of gold-coated beryllium metal – enables it to observe objects at greater distances, thus further back in time, than any other telescope. Its infrared optics allow Webb to detect a wider range of celestial objects and see through clouds of dust and gas that obscure light in the visible spectrum.

All five of Webb’s introductory targets were previously known to scientists, but NASA officials said Webb’s early imagery proved it works as designed, better than expected, while literally capturing its subjects in an entirely new light.

The image of Southern Ring Nebula, for instance, clearly showed the dying stellar object at its center was a binary pair of stars closely orbiting one another. The new Carina Nebula photos exposed contours of its massive clouds never seen before.

“This is an art piece that has been revealed by this telescope,” Rene Doyon, principal investigator for the observatory’s Canadian-built near-infrared camera and spectrograph. “It goes beyond my scientific mind.”

The SMACS 0723 image showed a 4.6 billion-year-old galaxy cluster whose combined mass acts as a “gravitational lens,” distorting space to greatly magnify light coming from more distant galaxies behind it.

One of the older galaxies appearing in the “background” of the photo – a composite of images of different wavelengths of light – dates back about 13.1 billion years.

The bejeweled-like photo, according to NASA, offers the “most detailed view of the early universe” as well as the “deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant cosmos” yet taken.

Underscoring the vastness of the universe, the thousands of galaxies appearing in the SMACS 0723 image appear in a tiny patch of sky roughly the size of a sand grain held at arm’s length by someone standing on Earth.

The Webb telescope is an international collaboration led by NASA in partnership with the European and Canadian space agencies.

Dec 26,2021:NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, built to give the world its first glimpse of the universe as it existed when the earliest galaxies formed, was launched by rocket early Saturday from the northeastern coast of South America, heralding a new era of astronomy.

The revolutionary $9 billion infrared telescope, described by NASA as the “premiere space-science observatory of the next decade”, was carried aloft inside the cargo bay of an Ariane 5 rocket that blasted off at about 7:20 a.m. EST from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) launch base in French Guiana.

The flawless Christmas Day launch, with a countdown conducted in French, was carried live on a joint NASA-ESA webcast. The liftoff capped a project decades in the making, coming to fruition after years of repeated delays and cost overruns.

“From a tropical rain forest to the edge of time itself, James Webb begins a voyage back to the birth of the universe,” a NASA commentator said as the two-stage launch vehicle, fitted with double solid-rocket boosters, roared off its launch pad into cloudy skies.

After a 27-minute, hypersonic ride into space, the 14,000-pound instrument was released from the upper stage of the French-built rocket about 865 miles above the Earth, and should gradually unfurl to nearly the size of a tennis court over the next 13 days as it sails onward on its own.

Live video captured by a camera mounted on the rocket’s upper stage showed the Webb gliding gently away after it was jettisoned, drawing cheers and applause from jubilant flight engineers in the mission control centre.

Flight controllers confirmed moments later, as Webb’s solar-energy array was deployed, that its power supply was working.

Coasting through space for two more weeks, the Webb telescope will reach its destination in solar orbit 1 million miles from Earth – about four times farther away than the moon. And Webb’s special orbital path will keep it in constant alignment with the Earth as the planet and telescope circle the sun in tandem.

By comparison, Webb’s 30-year-old predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope, orbits the Earth from 340 miles away, passing in and out of the planet’s shadow every 90 minutes.

Named after the man who oversaw NASA through most of its formative decade of the 1960s, Webb is about 100 times more sensitive than Hubble and is expected to transform scientists’ understanding of the universe and our place in it.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, striking a spiritual tone as he addressed the launch webcast by video link, quoted the Bible and hailed the new telescope as a “time machine” that will “capture the light from the very beginning of the creation.”

Webb mainly will view the cosmos in the infrared spectrum, allowing it to peer through clouds of gas and dust where stars are being born, while Hubble has operated primarily at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths.

The new telescope’s primary mirror – consisting of 18 hexagonal segments of gold-coated beryllium metal – also has a much bigger light-collecting area, enabling it to observe objects at greater distances, thus farther back into time, than Hubble or any other telescope.

That, astronomers say, will bring into view a glimpse of the cosmos never previously seen – dating to just 100 million years after the Big Bang, the theoretical flashpoint that set in motion the expansion of the observable universe an estimated 13.8 billion years ago.

Hubble’s view reached back to roughly 400 million years following the Big Bang, a period just after the very first galaxies – sprawling clusters of stars, gases and other interstellar matter – are believed to have taken shape.

While Hubble caught glimmers of “toddler” galaxies, Webb will reveal those objects in greater detail while also capturing even fainter, earlier “infant” galaxies, astrophysicist Eric Smith, NASA’s Webb program scientist, told Reuters hours before the launch.

Aside from examining the formation of the earliest stars and galaxies, astronomers are eager to study super-massive black holes believed to occupy the centers of distant galaxies.

Webb’s instruments also make it ideal to search for evidence of potentially life-supporting atmospheres around scores of newly documented exoplanets – celestial bodies orbiting distant stars – and to observe worlds much closer to home, such as Mars and Saturn’s icy moon Titan.

The telescope is an international collaboration led by NASA in partnership with the European and Canadian space agencies. Northrop Grumman Corp was the primary contractor. The Arianespace launch vehicle is part of the European contribution.

“The world gave us this telescope, and we handed it back to the world today,” Gregory Robinson, Webb program director for NASA told reporters at a post-launch briefing.

Webb was developed at a cost of $8.8 billion, with operational expenses projected to bring its total price tag to about $9.66 billion, far higher than planned when NASA was previously aiming for a 2011 launch. read more

Astronomical operation of the telescope, to be managed from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, is expected to begin in the summer of 2022, following about six months of alignment and calibration of Webb’s mirrors and instruments.

It is then that NASA expects to release the initial batch of images captured by Webb. Webb is designed to last up to 10 years.

Washington, Nov 20,2021: NASA and SpaceX set Tuesday night as a launch date for a spacecraft designed to hit an asteroid and test if it is an effective way to respond to such threats.

“Targeting Tuesday, November 23 at 10:21 pm PT [Pacific Time] for Falcon 9’s launch of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test [DART],” SpaceX said via Twitter on Friday. “NASA will intentionally crash the DART spacecraft into an asteroid to see if that is an effective way to change its course, should an Earth-threatening asteroid be discovered in the future.”

The DART mission will be launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in the US state of California.

The spacecraft is set to hit the smaller asteroid of the two-asteroid system Didymos and change its trajectory through kinetic impact.

The diameter of the smaller asteroid, known as Dimporphos, is about 160 meters (530 feet) while the larger is about 780 meters, but they pose no threat to Earth. The size of the DART is hundreds of times smaller than Dimorphos and will hit it at the speed of 24,000 kilometers per hour (14,900 miles per hour).

Jan 29,2022:NASA’s first-ever laser communications relay system, Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD), has successfully transmitted its first laser beams – First Light – through its optical telescopes, a critical milestone for the mission that aims to demonstrate the unique capabilities of laser/optical communications.
The LCRD mission was launched on December 7, 2021, on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 551 rocket from Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

“First Light is a critical milestone where the mission transmits its first beams of laser light through LCRD’s optical telescopes. Soon, the mission will begin its first experiments, demonstrating the benefits of optical communications,” NASA’s optical communications mission team tweeted.

LCRD features two optical terminals – one that receives data from a user spacecraft, while the other transmits data to ground stations on Earth. It leverages the power of laser communications, which uses infrared light rather than radio waves, to encode and transmit information to and from Earth, allowing 10 to 100 times more data to be transmitted back to Earth than the latter.

The missions’ ground stations on Earth are located on Table Mountain, California, and Haleakalā, Hawaii. Once LCRD receives information and encodes it, the payload sends the data to ground stations that are each equipped with telescopes to receive the light and modems to translate the encoded light back into digital data.

Additionally, laser systems provide decreased size, weight, and power requirements, making them ideal for space missions.

NASA’s LCRD mission will spend two years conducting tests and experiments and after the experimental phase, it will support in-space missions.

May 13,2022:Astronomers have published the first ever imagery of Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*, pronounced “Sagittarius A-star”), confirming the hypothesis developed in the 1980s that this compact radio source is in fact a supermassive black hole that sits at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The results were presented at press conferences held simultaneously around the world.

The research was done by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, a grouping of 300 astronomers and hundreds more support staff at 60 universities and institutions in 20 countries. The observing campaign was conducted in April 2017 using eight telescopes in Europe, South America, North America and Antarctica. Thousands of terabytes of data recorded by the telescopes were analyzed and processed for five years using supercomputers around the world to produce the simple but stunning graphical result.
NASA’s Chandra, NuSTAR and Swift telescopes participated in the experiment to complement the EHT’s measurements. The space-based observatories are capable of observing in X-ray and gamma ray wavelengths of light, revealing further details about the large-scale clouds of gas and dust interacting with the black hole.

Sgr A* has been studied for many decades. Karl Jansky, one of the founders of the field of radio astronomy, rose to prominence after detecting radio waves emanating from the center of the Milky Way in 1933. In the decades after, further observations discovered that the source of these observations was a very compact object, suggesting a black hole. Further evidence was presented in the early 2000s when a team of physicists led by Reinhard Genzel at the Max Planck Institute reported on a star orbiting a single massive and invisible object, ruling out the possibility of a cluster of massive dark objects in the galactic core.

Observations of the black hole itself have only been possible thanks to developments in very-long-baseline interferometry. The technique was first developed in the 1960s as a way to combine observations from multiple telescopes in order to emulate a single, larger telescope that is effectively the size of the distance between the two farthest receivers. Over the years, incremental improvements to the technology have allowed astronomers to shrink the wavelengths used in this method from the 1 meter scale down to 1.3 millimeters, with corresponding increases in resolution.
Moreover, since the actual shape of the radio waves have to be recorded and processed, every aspect of the technology needs to improve: the design of the radio telescopes, more precise pointing of the telescopes and the ability to record titanic amounts of data, transmit the data and recombine them. Using advances made in the past 60 years, particularly in fiber optics and atomic clocks, the EHT team was able to take measurements to within a trillionth of a second between observatories that are separated as far as Spain and the South Pole, making a telescope effectively the size of Earth. In doing so, astronomers were able to achieve the necessary precision to directly image the area around the Milky Way’s central black hole.

The data presented is the second set of measurements studying the environment immediately surrounding a black hole, particularly of the radiation produced by matter accreting around and eventually spiraling into the super-dense objects. The first such measurements were also taken by the EHT team and released in 2019, showing the region around the central black hole of galaxy Messier 87 (M87). Those results were deemed so significant that the following year, the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for research into black holes.

One the most important differences of the observations presented yesterday is that the black holes studied have vastly different masses. The black hole in the center of M87 is 6.5 billion times more massive than our Sun and occupies a region of space on the order of the entire Solar System. In comparison, Sgr A* is about 4.1 million times as massive as the Sun and it extends to about the orbit of Mercury, that is, it is 1,600 times smaller in mass and size than the black hole in M87.
The peculiarities of general relativity also mean that the timescales just beyond the event horizon of the two black holes (the point at which light can escape) also differ by a factor of about 1,600. Changes in the structure of the hot gas orbiting the black hole in M87, for example, might take one month. The same changes of the matter orbiting Sgr A* take about 30 minutes, making the neighborhood around the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole much more dynamic than that of its larger counterpart.

The rapidity of events in the region around Sgr A*, however, made it much more difficult to study. The researchers had to keep track of how structures were evolving over the course of a night, and individual observations could rarely last more than a few minutes. In addition, the much lower flow of material into this black hole makes for a fainter target, making it even harder to acquire quality data. Whole new computer algorithms had to be developed and tested in order to account for and surmount these hurdles.

Once these technical challenges had been overcome, a whole new physical regime could be visualized. Despite the vast differences in size, mass and inflow into the two black holes now imaged, both show a characteristic image form which can only be explained by the warping of spacetime predicted by Einstein’s general relativity. At the same time, the differences between the two black holes confirms the theory holds even under diverse conditions.

The relative quiescence of Sgr A* also provided an opportunity to observe a super-massive black hole in what is likely the normal state of most of these astronomical objects. In doing so, it served as a chance to more deeply understand how they interact with galaxies more generally, how accretion disks are formed and how jets of energy, such as the one being emitted from the center of M87, are launched.

The data also provided a measurement of the spin of the black hole, its most important property after its mass. The researchers were thus able to test the validity of the so-called Kerr metric, the mathematical description of in the theory of general relativity of a rotating black hole. It was also determined that one of the poles of Sgr A* is pointing more or less at Earth.

And more is to come. Similar to their observations of M87, the EHT astronomers also collected the polarization of the light (the orientation of the electromagnetic waves) emitted from the accretion disk around Sgr A*, which will let them reconstruct the magnetic fields around the black hole and provide further insight into the dynamics of its environment.

The collaboration also announced further work, including data collected this past March using an upgraded network of telescopes that will potentially be used to make movies of black holes in the near future. They are also planning to try to observe black holes in the center of even more distant galaxies, particularly those with large accretion disks and emitting colossal amounts of radiation.

Feb 10,2022: SpaceX’s newest fleet of satellites is tumbling out of orbit after being struck by a solar storm.

Up to 40 of the 49 small satellites launched last week have either re-entered the atmosphere and burned up, or are on the verge of doing so, the company said in an online update Tuesday night.
SpaceX said a geomagnetic storm last Friday made the atmosphere denser, which increased the drag on the Starlink satellites, effectively dooming them.

Ground controllers tried to save the compact, flat-panel satellites by putting them into a type of hibernation and flying them in a way to minimise drag. But the atmospheric pull was too great, and the satellites failed to awaken and climb to a higher, more stable orbit, according to the company.
SpaceX still has close to 2,000 Starlink satellites orbiting Earth and providing internet service to remote corners of the world. They circle the globe more than 550 km (340 miles) up.

The satellites hit by the solar storm were in a temporary position. SpaceX deliberately launches them into this unusually low orbit so that any duds can quickly re-enter the atmosphere and pose no threat to other spacecraft.

There is no danger from these newly falling satellites, either in orbit or on the ground, according to the company.

Each satellite weighs less than 260kg (575 pounds).
SpaceX described the lost satellites as a “unique situation”. Such geomagnetic storms are caused by intense solar activity like flares, which can send streams of plasma from the sun’s corona hurtling out into space and towards Earth.

Chandigarh, Jan 3 ,2022: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has earned Rs 5,600 crores through launch missions over three years, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said on Monday as he opened the Kalpana Chawla Centre for Research in Space Science and Technology here.

“So far India has successfully sent 342 satellites in space for 34 countries like the US, Japan, Israel, France, Spain, the UAE and Singapore. This is a big deal,” said Rajnath Singh.

The Kalpana Chawla Centre for Research in Space Science and Technology has been set up in Chandigarh University to train students in space science and satellite development.

Rajnath Singh said that if India’s education, knowledge and science were to reach the world stage, and if the country is to be made a ‘knowledge economy’, the public and private sectors have to work together.

“We are fast moving in that direction,” he added.

He said that when ISRO was established, the US and the former USSR were already far ahead in space mission. “It was difficult for us to carve a niche in space.”

“For a mission like Mangalyaan, where the US and Russia had to make five-six attempts even after putting in about 10 times more cost as compared to us, India was successful in first attempt,” he said.

Underlining the importance of the space sector in today’s times, Rajnath Singh said was deeply connected with mapping, imaging and connectivity facilities, speedy transportation, weather forecast, disaster management as well as border security.

He added that it played a crucial role in keeping the world connected during the Covi-19 pandemic, from testing to data transfer and analyses.

Remembering India-born astronaut Kalpana Chawla, the Minister described her as a symbol of women empowerment who took a flight beyond imagination.

He also launched a scholarship, worth Rs 10 crore, for the wards of defence personnel of the three services.

HELSINKI,Sept 21,2021:China’s Tianzhou-3 cargo spacecraft docked in orbit with the Tianhe space station module Monday following launch from the coastal Wenchang launch center.

A Long March 7 rocket lifted off from Wenchang at 3:10 a.m. Eastern September 20. Tianzhou-3 separated from the second stage after 597 seconds, having entered orbit and on track to catch up with Tianhe.

Deng Hongqin, director of the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, which administers Wenchang, declared the launch was a complete success during live coverage.

The uncrewed Tianzhou-3 spacecraft completed automated rapid rendezvous and docking maneuvers with Tianhe just under seven hours later at 10:08 p.m. Eastern, CCTV reported. The spacecraft used six orbital maneuvers after reaching orbit to approach Tianhe.

Tianzhou-3 is carrying around six tons of supplies for the upcoming crewed Shenzhou-13 mission as construction of China’s space station continues. The cargo consists mainly of fresh provisions for astronauts for what will be China’s longest human spaceflight mission yet. Other payloads include experiments and equipment.

The six-month-long Shenzhou-13 mission will launch from Jiuquan in the Gobi Desert as soon as early October. The spacecraft and its Long March 2F rocket have been in a state of readiness at Jiuquan for some time to allow possible rapid response to an emergency in orbit.

The crew is rumored to include one of China’s two women astronauts. Wang Yaping, a veteran of 2013’s Shenzhou-10 mission, is in training for space station missions.

The Tianzhou-3 mission is the fourth for construction of the Chinese space station. Tianhe, the station’s 22.5-ton first module, launched late April 28 and is currently in a 386 by 380-kilometer orbit inclined by 41.5 degrees.

The first crewed mission, Shenzhou-12, returned to Earth Sept. 17 following 90 days docked with Tianhe. Following this the Tianzhou-2 spacecraft, which provided supplies and equipment for the crew, undocked from Tianhe’s aft port on Saturday and carried out circumnavigation and forward docking maneuvers, making way for Tianzhou-3.

Tianzhou-2 and Tianzhou-3 will remain docked with 16.6-meter-long, 4.2-meter-diameter Tianhe (“harmony of the heavens”) until after the arrival of Shenzhou-13.

This requires the Shenzhou spacecraft to complete a radial, or R-Bar, rendezvous and docking with Tianhe’s nadir docking port. In preparation for this step Shenzhou-12 tested the relatively more challenging radial rendezvous without docking before returning to Earth. The spacecraft approached to and stopped at distances of 200 and 19 meters.

Tianzhou-2 will be used for a verification test of the space station’s main robotic arm before deorbiting. The arm will test its ability to manipulate modules to the lateral rings of the Tianhe docking hub.

Sept 16,2021: The first all-civilian crew bound for orbit has blasted off from the US state of Florida on board a SpaceX rocket ship, marking a new era in the space tourism business.

The spacecraft, carrying billionaire e-commerce executive Jared Isaacman and three less-wealthy private citizens he chose to join him, lifted off on Wednesday night (00:03 GMT Thursday) from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral.

A SpaceX webcast of the launch showed Isaacman, 38, and his crewmates – Sian Proctor, 51, Hayley Arceneaux, 29, and Chris Sembroski, 42 – strapped into the pressurised cabin of their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, dubbed Resilience, wearing their helmeted black-and-white flight suits.

The capsule roared into the Florida sky perched on top of one of the company’s reusable two-stage Falcon 9 rockets and fitted with a special observation dome in place of its usual docking hatch.

The flight, the first crewed mission headed to orbit without professional astronauts, is expected to last about three days from launch to splashdown in the Atlantic, mission officials said.

Moscow, Dec 15,2021: NASA’s Parker Solar Probe became the first spacecraft ever to “touch” the sun’s surface by entering into its upper atmosphere.
“For the first time in history, a spacecraft has touched the Sun. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has now flown through the Sun’s upper atmosphere – the corona – and sampled particles and magnetic fields there,” NASA said in a statement on Tuesday.
According to the agency, such a milestone marks great new beginnings for the solar science industry. Touching the sun, NASA noted, will help scientists explore the star’s influence on the solar system and uncover more information about its existence.
“Not only does this milestone provide us with deeper insights into our Sun’s evolution and its impacts on our solar system, but everything we learn about our own star also teaches us more about stars in the rest of the universe,” the associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, Thomas Zurbuchen, added.
NASA also said that the Parker Solar Probe will continue on its journey through the sun’s corona and will go on to provide scientists at the company with information that can not be studied from the Earth.
“Flying so close to the Sun, Parker Solar Probe now senses conditions in the magnetically dominated layer of the solar atmosphere – the corona – that we never could before. We see evidence of being in the corona in magnetic field data, solar wind data, and visually in images. We can actually see the spacecraft flying through coronal structures that can be observed during a total solar eclipse,” Nour Raoufi, the space probe’s project scientist, added.
Parker Space Probe was launched in 2018 with the aim of exploring the mysteries of the sun by traveling closer to the star than any other spacecraft ever before.

New Delhi , December 17,2021: Union Minister Jitendra Singh on Thursday said that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is developing a Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) with private participation and it will be launched in the first quarter of 2022.
In a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha today, Jitendra Singh informed that the SSLV will provide a payload capability of 500 kg to a 500 km planar orbit.
The Minister said that the development of SSLV is in the final stages and the first developmental flight of SSLV is targeted during the first quarter of 2022.

He said the government has sanctioned a total cost of Rs169 Crores for the development project including the development and qualification of the vehicle systems and the flight demonstration through three development flights (SSLV-D1, SSLV-D2 and SSLV-D3).
“The hardware and structures for the SSLV development project including the solid motor cases, nozzle sub-systems, mandrels for the casting of solid motors, inter-stage structures, actuator motors and fixtures will be realized through private industry,” Singh said.
The development of SSLV has been primarily envisaged to realize a cost-effective launch vehicle with high launch frequency and quick turnaround capability in order to cater to the growing opportunity in the global launch services market for small satellites.

Thiruvananthapuram , January 13,2022: The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) on Wednesday approved the appointment of S Somanath to the post of Secretary, Department of Space and Chairman, ISRO for a combined tenure of three years from the date of joining of the post.
Somanath, who is at present director of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), will succeed K Sivan.
“The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the appointment of S Somanath, Director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) to the post of Secretary, Department of Space and Chairman, Space Commission for a combined tenure of three years from the date of joining of the post, inclusive of an extension in tenure beyond the age of superannuation in the public interest, or until further orders whichever is earlier,” the statement reads.
Speaking to ANI, Somanath said, “I am very happy to join as Secretary, Department of Space and Chairman, Space Commission (ISRO). It is really an honour.”
Talking about the areas of focus he said there are different segments which we need to concentrate on.
“Areas of focus will be technology, policy, implementation and areas where stakeholders need to be taken care of. There are different segments that we need to concentrate on. Looking at the technology side we are the powerhouse of technology various disciplines. We need to bring new approach methods so that available can be best utilized. There are many new technologies too. We need to bring in newer approaches; have to work with various capacity builders like tech companies,” said Somanath.
“The next important is a lookout where all space can be utilised further. we have a traditional commination and navigation domain, but the application domains are so vast and innovative. Many people come out with new ideas and approaches. We need to see how those can be bought into the space domain and can create new applications by which that traditional process can produce better output. And also look out how new approaches can be bought in,” he said.
Somanath said that they also have to work with industries to see how the ecosystem of space can spread into industries.
“We have to look out how cost can be bought down substantially become space is a very costly business,” he added.
He further said that this is also the time to discuss business and profit in space.

Moscow, Sep 29,2021: Russia plans to launch two Soyuz manned spacecraft and three Progress cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) next year, according to the station’s flight program obtained by Sputnik.

According to the program, on March 18, 2022, it is planned to launch the Soyuz MS-21 spacecraft with Russian cosmonauts Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveyev and Sergey Korsakov, and on September 21, the Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft with Sergey Prokopyev, Anna Kikina and Dmitry Petelin.

In addition, launches of the Progress MS-19 (February 15), Progress MS-20 (June 3) and Progress MS-21 (October 26) are expected.

Washington, March 16,2022: Two US astronauts have prepared the International Space Station (ISS) for the installation of a new solar array (iROSA) boosting its electrical generating power in a nearly seven hour spacewalk, NASA announced in an official blog report. “NASA astronauts Kayla Barron and Raja Chari concluded their spacewalk at 3:06 pm EDT after 6 hours and 54 minutes in preparation for upcoming solar array installation,” the space agency said on Tuesday. The astronauts completed their major objectives in the spacewalk to prepare the space station for upcoming solar array upgrades by assembling and installing modification kits. They built a support bracket onto which a future ISS roll out solar array will be mounted. So far, two of six iROSAs have been deployed on the ISS, NASA said. It was the 247th spacewalk in support of space station assembly, upgrades and maintenance, and was the first in Chari’s career and the second for Barron. Both astronauts are serving on a six-month science mission on the ISS, according to NASA.

July 06,2022:China has criticised warnings from the chief of NASA that claimed Beijing may take over the moon as part of a military space programme.

Zhao Lijian, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, told reporters on Monday that China firmly opposed NASA Administrator Bill Nelson’s “irresponsible remarks”.
Nelson, who heads the United States’ space agency, had told the German newspaper Bild in an interview published on Saturday that he was worried about China’s space ambitions.

“We must be very concerned that China is landing on the moon and saying: ‘It’s ours now and you stay out’,” he said, referring to Beijing’s moon exploration plans.

China, which has stepped up the pace of its space programme in the past decade, has made exploration of the moon a focus.

It made its first lunar uncrewed landing in 2013 and is planning uncrewed missions to the moon’s south pole some time this decade.

It also plans to launch rockets powerful enough to send astronauts to the moon towards the end of this decade and has also set its sights on a Mars sample-return mission around 2030.

It is also working on a three-module space station called Tiangong that will rival the International Space Station (ISS), from which it is barred as US law bans NASA from sharing data with China.

Nelson said China’s space programme was a military one and claimed that it had stolen ideas and technology from others.
When Bild asked what military purposes China may pursue in space, he replied: “Well, what do you think is happening on the Chinese space station? They are learning how to destroy other people’s satellites.

Sept 17,2021: Pune-based theoretical physicist and cosmologist Thanu Padmanabhan passed away after suffering a cardiac arrest at home. He was 64.

A distinguished professor at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Padmanabhan had authored over 300 research papers and several books, with important contributions in areas of gravitation, quantum gravity, and structure and formation of the universe.

Padmanabhan’s research in theoretical physics had the Stanford University name him among the top scientists in the world, with a rank of 24.
After completing his schooling and later his undergraduate and postgraduate studies from the University of Kerala, Padmanabhan earned his doctoral degree from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) during 1979-1983. He later pursued a postdoctoral degree from the Institute of Astronomy under the University of Cambridge, UK.
He published nearly 300 papers and reviews in international journals and ten books.

Apart from several other awards, he was also honoured with a Padma Shri and was the winner of the inaugural Infosys Prize for Physical Sciences.

Oct 17,2021: China has tested a new space capability with a hypersonic missile, according to the Financial Times (FT).

The report, citing multiple sources familiar with the test, said on Saturday that Beijing launched the nuclear-capable missile in August.

The missile circled the Earth at low orbit before speeding towards its target, according to the sources, “demonstrating an advanced space capability that caught US intelligence by surprise”.

Three people briefed on the intelligence told the FT that the missile missed its target by more than 20 miles (32 kilometres).

However, two said the “test showed that China had made astounding progress on hypersonic weapons and was far more advanced than US officials realised”.

The FT’s sources said the hypersonic glide vehicle was carried by a Long March rocket, launches of which China usually announces, though the August test was kept under wraps.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said he would not comment on the specifics of the report.

But he added, “We have made clear our concerns about the military capabilities China continues to pursue, capabilities that only increase tensions in the region and beyond. That is one reason why we hold China as our number one pacing challenge.”

Along with China, the United States, Russia and at least five other countries are working on hypersonic technology.

Hypersonic missiles, like traditional ballistic missiles which can deliver nuclear weapons, can fly at more than five times the speed of sound.

But ballistic missiles fly high into space in an arc to reach their target, while a hypersonic flies on a trajectory low in the atmosphere, potentially reaching a target more quickly.

Crucially, a hypersonic missile is manoeuvrable, making it harder to track and defend against.

While countries like the US have developed systems designed to defend against cruise and ballistic missiles, the ability to track and take down a hypersonic missile remains questionable.

China has been aggressively developing the technology, seeing it as crucial to defend against US gains in hypersonic and other technologies, according to a recent report by the US Congressional Research Service (CRS).

The reported test comes as US-China tensions have mounted and Beijing has stepped up military activity near Taiwan, the self-ruled US-aligned democracy that Beijing considers a breakaway province.