Tag: space exploration

Growing Plants on Moon: NASA’s Next Big Project By 2015

Neha Shukla

Researchers and scientists are always curious to find life on other planets and tries to find whether other planets could ever sustain life. NASA is trying to find an answer to one such question and is planning to grow plants on moon, with the assistance of a robot, few cameras and thousands of schoolchildren. In 2015, a group of NASA scientist named as The Lunar Plant Growth Habitat Team, along with volunteers, contractors and students will be trying to bring life on other planet, which has been never attempted so…

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Comet ISON’s Journey Comes To An End

Pooja Kashyap

After travelling for over a million years, Comet ISON or Comet Nevski–Novichonok, a sungrazing comet discovered on 21 September 2012 by Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok will be completing its inward journey through the solar system by the Thanksgiving Day, that is, Nov. 28, 2013. Researchers feel that either it will shatter due to the extreme heat of the sun or speeds back, never to return. Space scientists were intrigued since the time they had discovered the Comet ISON (in Sept 2012) because they believe that the comet consists of…

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Dust Ring Confirmed Near Venus Orbit

Pooja Kashyap

Interplanetary dust or the Cosmic dust has occupied space in the solar system. Studies are still being conducted in order to understand the nature, origin and its relationship to larger bodies in space. However, one thing is confirmed that a planet’s gravity is acting on the cosmic dust by pulling it into its orbit forming a ring of dust around itself. Earth too has been travelling in the ring of dust, a discovery that was made twenty years ago. Since then space scientists have been working upon gathering the information…

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Mars Has Granitic Rocks: A Research

Pooja Kashyap

Every time one reads a philosophical novel, one finds a new motif running parallelly across the main theme and the numbers of motifs keep on increasing with the number of times the book is re-read. Expedition on Mars is quite similar to such an experience or a discovery at least I think so. Until now, researchers advocated that Mars is much simpler geologically with respect to Earth and that the planet’s surface consists of only basalt, dark-colored volcanic rocks. However, a recent discovery by the Curiosity rover has surfaced more…

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Carbonated Meteorite Hints At Presence of Carbon Dioxide on Mars

Pooja Kashyap

Planets scientists’ have discovered carbonation in a meteorite that landed on earth, US to be more specific, in late back 1931. Meteorite study suggests that it must be 3,000 years old and is carried off from the surface of Mars. This asserts that the surface on Mars must be loaded with carbon dioxide, which had happened not more than 3 to 4 billion years ago. Researchers still have no argument which supports the reason for its current absence. However, they have postulated several reasons that might have lead to the…

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GOCE, The Earth Monitoring Satellite De-Orbiting Soon

Pooja Kashyap

Gravity Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE), an Earth monitoring satellite was propelled to space in March 2009, since then it has been circulating the orbit but very soon, it will run out of fuel and ultimately crash. As maintained by the space researchers, the crash will not result in any risk for humanity. Nearly 50 chunks of mass 250 kgs are estimated to hit the planet earth. Land or ocean, target of the fragments is still not known said the team behind spacecraft. Precision would depend on the proximity of the…

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Are Black Holes doorways To Other Universes?

Pooja Kashyap

Black holes are one of those flabbergasted phenomena of universe that research is still being done on the subject. Gravitational pull is what keep the things moving on earth but with a huge amount of power we can escape the gravity and can move around like in space ships, rockets etc.. However, this is not the case with black holes, density of the object is so high that it funnels down everything that touches it perimeter, light too cannot escape it and is engulfed by the unplumbed phenomenon.

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Diamonds Could Be Floating Around Inside Of Saturn

Pooja Kashyap

As per the recent planetary analysis scientists discovered that deep atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn might hold large pieces of diamond floating in a mixture of hydrogen/helium fluid. In order to understand the carbon allotropy with respect to diamond across temperature and pressure, the scientists behind the study plotted a phase diagram. This diagram was then combined with the new pressure-temperature statistics of Jupiter and Saturn. The grid indicated that diamond will be in a stable phase in deep interiors but below the region where the stability will not work,…

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Titan Could Be A Fountainhead Of Organic Compounds

Pooja Kashyap

Propylene, an unsaturated organic compound has been discovered in Space debris. The compound is used as raw material in the production of food storage containers that we employ in our kitchen, other consumer products including car bumpers. Cassini, the largest, heaviest and most complex interplanetary spacecraft of NASA’s identified the debris on Saturn’s moon Titan. For the first time, the organic compound has been discovered in the aerospace. This is not the only exploration done on Titan. During 1980 expedition of Titan, the spacecraft (Voyager1) has detected some hydrocarbons, the…

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Supervolcanoes May Lurked On Ancient Mars

Pooja Kashyap

Basin that was previously thought to be a consequence of meteorite impact on the surface of the Red planet is in fact the remnants of an ancient flared up supervolcano, postulated by Joseph R. Michalski, Senior Scientist at the Planetary Science Institute and co-author Jacob E. Bleacher of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. In the words Michalski, On Mars, young volcanoes have a very distinctive appearance that allows us to identify them. The long-standing question has been what ancient volcanoes on Mars look like. Perhaps they look like this one. Capacity of the…

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Magnetic Energy Near Earth Responsible For Space Weather

Pooja Kashyap

If we look up at the sky, we find there is no notion of chaos and everything is calm and stillness prevails but this is not the actual case, at least not in the orbit surrounding the earth or the interplanetary space. Some or the other form of activity is reigning in the region which gives rise to space weather. Explosions of solar material and magnetic fields of strong potency are some of the activities that are thronging the interplanetary space. These eruptions causes weather alterations on the planet Earth…

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3 Man Crew Went On A Sprint Run to Space Station

Pooja Kashyap

Michael Hopkins of NASA and Oleg Kotov & Sergei Ryazansky of Russia took off from Baikonur space centre for the International Space Station atop a Soyuz rocket. The technique employed by the capsule in orbiting the Earth is slightly different from the conventional one in the sense that it will orbit the Earth four times than 30. This technique of sprint run in space was formerly employed in Soviet era but only implemented on a regular basis in the past year. The plan is to combat stresses of space faced by…

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Epsilon Soared Into Space To Gaze Planets

Pooja Kashyap

In order to create a mark in the international rocket – launching business, Japan has come up with their new rocket called Epsilon. As per the sources, Epsilon is a cheaper yet efficient solution of sending satellites into space. This is the second rocket after H-II that the nation has launched to improve the reliability and minimize costs. The production of Epsilon has cost around a third of H-II. The reason being its latest computer machines, that can perform self-autonomous tasks, like keeping checks and assembling parts. In order to…

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Meteor Impact Led To Pastoral Revolution

Pooja Kashyap

It is very likely to think that an meteor colliding with earth may wash out the complete planet. However, what will happen if the size is somewhere between twenty-five square feet, well, the effect will be like a bomb blast. In either of the case, the result will be a disaster. We believe that comet or meteor impact always results in catastrophe but researchers from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, US believes in possibility that meteor impact could be a reason of initiating civilization. As per the earlier versions of…

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Space Colonisation, The Next Level of Evolution

Pooja Kashyap

Personifying the Earth as fragile, Stephen Hawking, has drawn attention to a fact that earth might not be able to support us after 1,000 years and hence humanity must try its aim of going into space for colonization. Technologically humans have advanced relatively but predicting a lush world other than Earth is not that easy. Therefore, to colonize any planet in space, first thing we would require is gravity and artificial habitat. Alternatively, we need to travel insurmountable light years to reach/look for a planet that is already sodden with…

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