Science

A new Chinese carrier rocket made its first flight on Tuesday under a long-term plan to develop reusable launch vehicles aimed at reducing mission costs and speed up launch schedules for commercial clients. The medium-lift Long March 8 Y-1 blasted off at 12:37pm (10:07am IST) from the southern Chinese island of Hainan carrying five satellites,

Winter Solstice this year will see a rare astronomical event – the Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. True to the saying that ‘every cloud has a silver lining,’ the pandemic-ridden 2020 is bringing a year-end treat for all of us. Google is also celebrating the Winter Solstice and the Great Conjunction with its latest

India successfully launched its latest communication satellite CMS-01 on board its Polar rocket from the spaceport here on Thursday, the second and last launch this year amid the COVID-19 pandemic. ISRO’s trusted polar satellite launch vehicle, PSLV-C50, injected the satellite into the predefined orbit around 20 minutes after the lift-off from the second launch pad

China will share data and samples from the moon obtained by its Chang’e 5 probe on the basis of international conventions though “unfortunate” US restrictions on cooperation might prevent it getting any, the deputy head of its space agency said. The probe landed in the northern region of Inner Mongolia in the early hours of

A Canadian astronaut will take part in a lunar mission for the first time in 2023, as part of the NASA-led Artemis project, the minister for innovation, science and industry announced Wednesday. “I am proud to announce another first: Canada will join the US on the first crewed mission to the Moon since the Apollo

An unmanned Chinese spacecraft carrying rocks and soil from the Moon returned safely to Earth early Thursday in the first mission in four decades to collect lunar samples, the Xinhua news agency said. The return module of the space probe known as Chang’e-5 landed in northern China’s Inner Mongolia region, Xinhua said, quoting the China

 Chinese ground crews are standing by for the return of a lunar probe bringing back the first fresh samples of rock and debris from the moon in more than 45 years. The Chang’e probe is expected to land in the Siziwang district of the vast Inner Mongolia region late Wednesday or early Thursday. It fired

Russia on Monday successfully test-launched its heavy lift Angara A5 space rocket for the second time, the country’s military and space officials said. The rocket lifted off Monday morning from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northwest Russia. “It flies, damn it!” Dmitry Rogozin, head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, tweeted after the launch. Еще больше видео!

UK engineers will soon begin work on a comet-chasing spacecraft that will track down and map one of the celestial objects in three dimensions. Thales Alenia Space, with three sites in the UK, have won the contract to design and build the mother ship for the European Space Agency’s EUR 150 million (roughly Rs. 1,300 crores)

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook on Saturday called on governments and businesses to implement stronger climate targets starting next year, during remarks at the United Nations’ Climate Ambition Summit. “We call on companies and governments around the world to do all we can to make 2021 the year we turn the corner for good,” Cook

A Chinese spacecraft carrying rocks and soil from the Moon has begun its journey back to Earth, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday, putting China on course to become the first country to successfully retrieve lunar samples since the 1970s. Engines on the Chang’e 5 probe were ignited 143 miles (230 kilometres) from

Hyundai Motor Group and its chairman have agreed to buy a controlling stake in Boston Dynamics from SoftBank Group in a deal that values the US-based robot maker at $1.1 billion (roughly Rs. 8,111 crores). The South Korean automaker group said on Friday the purchase would help it expand automation in its vehicle factories and

SpaceX’s Starship prototype exploded while attempting to land on Wednesday after an otherwise successful test launch from the company’s rocket facility in Boca Chica, Texas, live video of the flight showed. The Starship rocket destroyed in the accident was a 16-story-tall prototype for the heavy-lift launch vehicle being developed by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s private

Japan space agency officials on Sunday hailed the arrival of rare asteroid samples on Earth after they were collected by space probe Hayabusa2 during an unprecedented mission. In a streak of light across the night sky, a capsule containing the precious specimens taken from a distant asteroid arrived on Earth after being dropped off by

Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin will take the first woman to the moon’s surface, the billionaire said on Friday as NASA nears a decision to pick its first privately built lunar landers capable of sending astronauts to the moon by 2024. “This (BE-7) is the engine that will take the first woman to the

Chinese scientists claim to have built a quantum computer that is able to perform certain computations nearly 100 trillion times faster than the world’s most advanced supercomputer, representing the first milestone in the country’s efforts to develop the technology. The researchers have built a quantum computer prototype that is able to detect up to 76