Space Tonics – Page 7

GU Psc b: Another Exoplanet Discovered Through Direct Imaging

May 14, 2014 Pooja Kashyap

Space scientists have discovered a new planet by collective observations from the Gemini Observatories, the Observatoire Mont-Mégantic (OMM), the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) and the W.M. Keck Observatory. The gas giant is situated around GU Psc, in the constellation Pisces and is believed to be 3 times less massive than the Sun. The distance between the planet GU Psc b and its star GU Psc is approximately 2,000 times Earth-Sun distance. With this distance, it would take the planet nearly 80,000 Earth years to complete just one orbit around its star.…

Illustris is New Time Machine: Simulation of the Realistic Virtual Universe

May 8, 2014May 8, 2014 Pooja Kashyap

We know how our universe look today and we have pretty good idea as to how it looked before the things started taking shape somewhere around the Big Bang. But we have no idea how the galaxies evolve and what was before the Big Bang. In order to study this, researchers at the MIT have built a computer simulation, they have named it the Illustris. This simulation is so complex that calculating on single desktop might take 2k years alone and its volume comprises around 215m light years. Although there…

Landforms on Mars: Recent Melt-Water and Debris Flow Activity in Craters

April 30, 2014April 29, 2014 Neha Shukla

According to a recent study, researchers claim that Mars had liquid water, as recent as 200,000 years ago. In southern mid latitudes of Mars, a young crater has been discovered. Researchers say that this crater has well conserved gorge and debris of sediments created by flowing liquid water. The geomorphological feature of these formations furnishes evidence that the action of flowing water had created them in recent geological time.

Newly Discovered Neighbor of the Sun: Chilly as the Earth’s North Pole

April 27, 2014May 3, 2014 Pooja Kashyap

Kevin Luhman, an astronomer at Penn State University has discovered a star, “brown dwarf” that is around 7.2 light-years away. Currently it appears to be as cold as Earth’s North Pole and positioned at fourth rank with respect to the Sun. The space scientist claims that insights from the new system might helpful in knowing the atmospheres associated with cold temperatures on similar other systems. Like stars, the brown dwarfs initiate the same life cycle but during the collapse, they lack the mass that is required to burn the nuclear…

Bright Points in Solar Atmosphere: Gateway to Sun’s Roiling Interior

April 18, 2014 Pooja Kashyap

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has been able to collect data regarding the depth of the shining star, bright spots in the solar atmosphere and the strings of magnetic signatures observed on the surface of Earth. With this data, space scientists will get a peek into the insights related to the real-time mapping of the sun’s roiling interior. These understandings will help them on converging the decade long investigations of its 22-year sunspot cycle and emission of solar flares. As per Scott McIntosh, one of the lead researchers, this data…

Growing Vegetables on Mars: Farming goes Extraterrestrial

April 16, 2014 Neha Shukla

After NASA’s attempt to grow plants on the moon by 2015, researchers are now trying to explore whether they can grow plants on the red planet as well. This research would be also beneficial for the Mars One project which is planning to make permanent human settlement on the planet.

10 Unbelievably Startling Facts About Our Universe

April 9, 2014April 15, 2014 Pragati Kashyap

From its acceleration to expansion to dark matter and energy, the Universe continues to consistently amaze and perplex our scientists & astronomers alike. From unimaginably gigantic to incredibly minute stuff, there’s an awful lot going around in this field we refer to as ‘existence’. The recent discovery made by the scientists working at the Large Hadron Collider, a place near Geneva, revealed a startling new fact about elusive Higgs boson particle. A lot of buzz surrounded the information revealed by this discovery regarding the constitution of the fabric of the…

Space Based Solar Power: Photovoltaic Satellite System

March 19, 2014 Neha Shukla

Researchers are continually trying to improve the ways to capture solar energy more efficiently for powering industries, towns, remote villages and even for military purposes. Military needs lots of fuel for its operations. In fact, Pentagon oil consumption is one of the largest in the world and with the fuel price rise, the military is searching for other energy options. Therefore, in the United States Naval Research Laboratory, researchers are trying to tap solar energy directly from the space and send it to military base operating in far-flung remote villages.

Planet X and Nemesis Myth Debunked: WISE Survey

March 17, 2014March 17, 2014 Pooja Kashyap

In an attempt to find the reasons, which led to the wobbly effect of Uranus’s orbit, researchers discovered other planets like Neptune and Pluto but there was no Planet X anywhere. Similarly, the hunt for Sun like star, Nemesis, which they claim might have wiped out the age of dinosaurs completely, is still a far-fetched dream. It’s been an effort of more than two centuries and now the researchers want to draw line to reach a conclusion. Kevin Luhman an astronomer at the University of Pennsylvania asserted that there are no such…

Galactic Gas Stations: Re-fueling Spacecrafts on the Way

March 12, 2014April 15, 2014 Neha Shukla

MIT researchers are planning to build a gas station in space, positioned at some point between the earth and the moon, which can fuel the future spacecraft going on lunar missions. These space-based spacecraft refueling station would involve low cost and require lesser maintenance. The space station will be positioned at Lagrange points, which is that region of space somewhere between the Earth, the moon and the sun that sustain gravitational equilibrium and thus remain at one place with respect to moon and earth.

Gravitational Torques of Milky Way and Andromeda Responsible for Spatial Configuration

March 11, 2014 Pooja Kashyap

Space scientists have been working long to discover other universes. Many researchers and studies have been conducted so far and are still going on to understand the reasons, which led to the formation of Milky Way and nearby constellation. Till date it has been accepted that Milky Way and its orbiting companion Andromeda are the leading components in a flock of galaxies known as the Local Group, which is nearly 3 million light years away. Lately, a research has open up new avenues with respect to new galaxies within 35-million…

Flowing Water on Mars: Still Hard to Prove

February 28, 2014February 28, 2014 Neha Shukla

Presence of water on Mars has been always a topic of discussion for the researchers. Even though it is still not confirmed, whether the Red planet ever possessed water. Since 2011, peculiar strips (possibly water) have been noticed to appear and then disappear from the planet’s surface. Lujendra Ojha, the then scholar at the University of Arizona, first discovered these mysterious strips.

Global WiFi Soon Directly From the Orbit: The Outernet Project

February 27, 2014 Pooja Kashyap

Within a year, prototype satellites would be deployed in orbit to broadcast free internet data across the globe. New York’s Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF) is bankrolling the project, called the “Outernet”. CubeSat, a miniaturized satellite is expected to launch around Jan next year provided the prototype, which is being sent to space this June works well. Soon enough Earth would be encircled with such tiny satellites that would be sending internet signals back to Earth and then there would be no such thing called the censored web, as is…

First Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration Goes Successful

February 18, 2014 Pooja Kashyap

Researchers from NASA and MIT have been trying to create a two-way laser link communication between the Moon and the Earth. The effort has been initiated last year in the month of Oct. First step concluded by beaming of laser light from a spacecraft orbiting the moon to the earth, at White Sands, New Mexico. And then the beam was sent to the spacecraft from the lab and this process went for about a month. Space scientists have dubbed it as Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD). The entire mechanism went…

Satellite Servicing: Refueling Missions versus Resurrecting Satellites

February 14, 2014February 14, 2014 Pooja Kashyap

Satellites do not know concepts like repairing or re-fueling. Once they are put into orbit, they last until the task is completed and then de-orbit. In case of malfunctioning, they are just forgotten about and are left to contribute to space junk. So what exactly would robots in manned cosmonautics do, although researchers envision that the bots would help in repairs and maintenance at the ISS along with other things including minimize human work. Interestingly, DARPA is trying to resurrect the ‘dead’ satellites by imparting the required skills to its…