Despite being the most evolved species, there are some things we humans simply cannot do. Like, change the size of our brain. Over the years, it was found that certain members of the animal kingdom possess the ability to increase their brain size. And now, a new study has revealed that Indian jumping ants can
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Elon Musk’s Neuralink startup is developing a brain-machine interface that will enable users to control computers and smartphones directly from their brain. Founded in 2016, Neuralink is now demonstrating the progress it has made over the years by showing a macaque named Pager playing Pong video game using a N1 neural link chip. In the
NASA helicopter placed on Mars could make its first flight over the Red Planet within two days after a successful initial test of its rotors, the US space agency said Friday. The current plan for the first-ever attempt at powered, controlled flight on another planet is for the four-pound (1.8kg) helicopter, dubbed the Ingenuity, to take
A three-man crew docked at the international Space Station Friday after a flight honouring the 60th anniversary of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becoming the first person in space. A Soyuz capsule carrying Roscosmos cosmonauts Oleg Novitsky and Pyotr Dubrov and NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei docked at 1105 GMT (4:35pm IST), footage broadcasted by NASA
The images capture drama billions of years ago in the early Universe – glinting galaxies, glowing with stars that have exploded into supernovas and blazing jets fired from black holes. Europe’s giant LOFAR radio telescope has detected stars being born in tens of thousands of distant galaxies with unprecedented precision, in a series of studies
NASA’s Ingenuity mini-helicopter has been dropped on the surface of Mars in preparation for its first flight, the US space agency said. The ultra-light aircraft had been fixed to the belly of the Perseverance rover, which touched down on the Red Planet on February 18. “#MarsHelicopter touchdown confirmed!” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory tweeted Saturday. “Its
An uncrewed SpaceX Starship prototype rocket failed to land safely on Tuesday after a test launch from Boca Chica, Texas, and engineers were investigating, SpaceX said. “We do appear to have lost all the data from the vehicle,” SpaceX engineer John Insprucker said in a webcast video of the rocket’s flight test. “We’re going to
A college science professor and an aerospace data analyst were named on Tuesday to round out a four-member crew for a SpaceX launch into orbit planned later this year billed as the first all-civilian spaceflight in history. The two latest citizen astronauts were introduced at a news briefing livestreamed from the Kennedy Space Center in
A space technology company in southern Nevada, US, is suing NASA, claiming the space agency owes it more than $1 million (roughly Rs. 7.3 crores) for work done during months of space station air performance tests last year. A NASA public affairs official did not immediately respond Monday to a message about the Bigelow Aerospace
Vocalis Health is an Israel based AI healthtech company that says it has developed a new software that can analyse a person’s voice and use that to detect if they have COVID 19 or not. According to the company, vocal biomarkers from people’s recorded voices can be used to screen, detect, monitor and predict health
Alphabet’s Google said on Wednesday it had sealed agreements with various Italian publishers to offer access to some of their content on the US tech giant’s Showcase news platform. Google News Showcase is a global vehicle to pay news publishers for their content online and a new service that would allow partnering publishers to curate content
Aerospace firms on Thursday credited NASA with a successful test of engines on a Boeing-built rocket for Artemis missions that aim to return US astronauts to the moon by 2024, more than half a century since the last lunar walk. NASA simulated a launch by firing the engines of the core stage of the Space Launch
India and France are working on their third joint satellite mission, even as the bilateral space collaboration is entering into multiple domains, including human spaceflight programme, ISRO Chairman K Sivan said. Sivan, also Secretary in the Department of Space, said many French companies are keen to tap into opportunities thrown up by recent reforms injected
The launch of a Russian Soyuz rocket, with 38 foreign satellites on board, has been postponed until Sunday, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said. The launch of satellites from more than half a dozen Asian, Arab and European countries, as well as Canada and Brazil, which had been scheduled for 0607 GMT (11:37am IST) on
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and National Institute of Technology(NIT), Rourkela have signed an MoU for setting up a Space Technology Incubation Centre(S-TIC). The MoU was signed Thursday after ISRO agreed to set up a Space Technology Incubation Centre(S-TIC) at NIT Rourkela. This collaboration with ISRO will open up new opportunities for research and development
Peering into the early Universe some 12 billion years ago, scientists in France have for the first time seen the incandescent filaments of hydrogen gas known as the “cosmic web,” they said Thursday.Cosmological models have long predicted its existence, but until now the cosmic web had never been directly observed and captured in images. Eight
The next launch window for a NASA crew to the International Space Station aboard a SpaceX rocket has been pushed back by at least another two days, to no earlier than April 22, the space agency said. SpaceX, the private rocket company of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, had been scheduled to carry its second “operational”
As NASA’s rover Perseverance explores the surface of Mars, scientists hunting for signs of ancient life on the distant planet are using data gathered on a mission much closer to home at a lake in southwest Turkey. NASA says the minerals and rock deposits at Salda are the nearest match on Earth to those around
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched the sounding rocket (RH-560) to study attitudinal variations in the neutral winds and plasma dynamics carried out on Friday at Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC), Sriharikota Range (SHAR). “Launch of sounding rocket (RH-560) to study attitudinal variations in the neutral winds and plasma dynamics carried out today at SDSC
The largest asteroid to pass by Earth this year will approach within some 1.25 million miles (two million kilometres) of our planet on March 21, NASA said Thursday. The US space agency said it will allow astronomers to get a rare close look at an asteroid. The asteroid, 2001 FO32, is estimated to be about
The bundle of instruments known as SuperCam on board the Perseverance Mars rover has collected its first samples in the hunt for past life on the Red Planet, mission scientists said Wednesday. The return to Earth years from now of the rocks and soil it retrieves “will give scientists the Holy Grail of planetary exploration,”
Russia and China unveiled plans Tuesday for a joint lunar space station, as Moscow seeks to recapture the glory of its space pioneering days of Soviet times, and Beijing gears up its own extraterrestrial ambitions. Though Moscow was once at the forefront of space travel – it sent the first man into space – its
ISRO has completed development of a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) capable of producing extremely high-resolution images for a joint earth observation satellite mission with the US space agency National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR) is a joint collaboration for a dual-frequency L and S-band SAR for earth observation. “NISAR will be the
VinTeam is one of the finalists in the XPRIZE Pandemic Response Challenge, which focuses on the development of data-driven AI systems to predict COVID-19 infection rates, and plan interventions. VinTeam is made up of Mudit Jain, a software engineering lead at Google, and Biplab Deka, PhD from the University of Illinois, UC. The duo have
It’s the sort of chance that comes along just once in a blue Moon: a Japanese billionaire is throwing open a private lunar expedition to eight people from around the world. Yusaku Maezawa, an online fashion tycoon, was announced in 2018 as the first man to book a spot aboard the lunar spaceship being developed
NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance has taken its first, short drive on the surface of the red planet, two weeks after the robot science lab’s picture-perfect touchdown on the floor of a massive crater, mission managers said on Friday. The six-wheeled, car-sized astrobiology probe put a total of 6.5 meters (21.3 feet) on its odometer on
Searching for traces of life on Mars, like NASA is doing, is one thing. But scientists are also looking further afield. Could it be found beyond our solar system? A study published on Thursday in the prestigious journal Science reveals the discovery of a new exoplanet that could be instrumental in the hunt. Researchers will
Third time’s a charm? Not so for SpaceX, whose unmanned rocket exploded on the ground Wednesday after carrying out what had seemed to be a successful flight and landing – fresh on the heels of two fiery crashes. It was yet another flub involving a prototype of the Starship rocket, which SpaceX hopes one day
Apple on Tuesday shared insights from the Apple Hearing Study, ahead of World Hearing Day today. The study shares findings from long-term hearing health data gathered with the participation of thousands of Apple Watch and iPhone users in the US. Insights included how many experience a daily average environmental sound exposure higher than the World
Spacewalking astronauts ventured out Sunday to install support frames for new, high-efficiency solar panels arriving at the International Space Station later this year. NASA’s Kate Rubins and Victor Glover put the first set of mounting brackets and struts together, then bolted them into place next to the station’s oldest and most degraded solar wings. But
SpaceX has cancelled the planned launch of a Falcon 9 carrier rocket with 60 Starlink satellites. “Auto-abort at T-1:24 ahead of tonight’s Falcon 9 launch of Starlink; next launch opportunity is tomorrow, March 1 at 8:15 p.m. EST [03:15 GMT on Tuesday],” SpaceX said on Twitter on Sunday. Auto-abort at T-1:24 ahead of tonight’s Falcon
Countdown for the launch of PSLV-C51/Amazonia-1 mission commenced on Saturday from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. “Countdown for the launch of #PSLVC51/Amazonia-1 mission commenced today at 08:54 am from Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) SHAR, Sriharikota. The launch is scheduled tomorrow at 10:24 am,” Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said. Primary
For All Mankind season 2 — premiering February 19 on Apple TV+ worldwide — continues to explore the ripple effects of the Soviets putting a man (and a woman) on the Moon before the Americans. In some ways, it created a better, equitable world in the USA. Women enjoy a better position at NASA (in
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is getting ready to launch a new-generation compact rocket on its maiden orbital test flight, the space agency said. Bengaluru-headquartered ISRO has over the years realised five generation of launch vehicles – SLV-3, ASLV, PSLV, GSLV, and GSLV-MkIII. It had taken up development of the mini rocket – Small
The huge parachute used by NASA’s Perseverance rover to land on Mars contained a secret message, thanks to a puzzle lover on the spacecraft team. Systems engineer Ian Clark used a binary code to spell out “Dare Mighty Things” in the orange and white strips of the 70-foot (21-metre) parachute. He also included the GPS
NASA on Monday released the first high-quality video of a spacecraft landing on Mars, a three-minute trailer showing the enormous orange and white parachute hurtling open and the red dust kicking up as rocket engines lowered the rover to the surface. The footage was so good — and the images so breathtaking — that members
NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance, the most advanced astrobiology lab ever sent to another world, streaked through the Martian atmosphere on Thursday and landed safely inside a vast crater, the first stop on a search for traces of ancient microbial life on the Red Planet. Mission managers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles
A fresh examination has revealed new details about the first black hole ever detected – which was spotted in 1964 and became the subject of a friendly wager between renowned scientists – including that it is bigger than previously known. Researchers said on Thursday that new observations of the Cygnus X-1 black hole, orbiting in
NASA scientists on Friday presented striking early images from the picture-perfect landing of the Mars rover Perseverance, including a selfie of the six-wheeled vehicle dangling just above the surface of the Red Planet moments before touchdown. The color photograph, likely to become an instant classic among memorable images from the history of spaceflight, was snapped
To realise his dream of satellite-powered Internet, tech billionaire Elon Musk needs to install antennas around the world. In northern France, a village hopes he’ll decide to keep those antennas far away. Saint-Senier-de-Beuvron, population 350, is none too thrilled to have been picked as a ground station for Musk’s Starlink project for broadband from space.
Spacecraft aiming to land on Mars have skipped past the planet, burned up on entry, smashed into the surface, and made it down amid a fierce dust storm only to spit out a single fuzzy gray picture before dying. Almost 50 years after the first casualty at Mars, NASA is attempting its hardest Martian touchdown
A miniature rover being developed to explore the Moon’s surface is on track to join the search for water there, its Hungarian inventors believe – using a device that weighs less than a bag of sugar. Named after a Hungarian breed of dog, the Puli rover is a low-cost platform designed to carry different payloads,
An unmanned Russian cargo ship launched successfully Monday with a load of supplies for the International Space Station (ISS). The Progress MS-16 cargo ship blasted off as scheduled at 9:45am local time (9:15am IST) from the Russia-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan and reached a designated orbit en route to the station. Пуск ракеты-носителя «Союз-2.1а»,
When NASA’s Mars rover Perseverance, a robotic astrobiology lab packed inside a space capsule, hits the final stretch of its seven-month journey from Earth this week, it is set to emit a radio alert as it streaks into the thin Martian atmosphere. By the time that signal reaches mission managers some 127 million miles (204
In a move that will give chills to fans of the dystopian movie The Matrix, scientists have developed a wearable device that could use the human body to replace batteries. Echoing world-domineering robots’ use of enslaved humans in the 1999 cyberpunk movie, US researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have created an environmentally-friendly gadget that
China’s space agency released video footage from its spacecraft circling Mars on Friday, two days after it successfully entered the planet’s orbit in Beijing’s latest ambitious space mission. In the video, published by state broadcaster CCTV, the surface of the planet is seen coming into view out of a pitch black sky against the outside
Indian Space Research Organisation and location and navigation technology solutions provider MapmyIndia announced an initiative to partner together to offer India’s best, and fully indigenous, mapping portal, and geospatial services. It combines the power of MapmyIndia’s digital maps and technologies with ISRO’s catalogue of satellite imagery and earth observation data, according to MapmyIndia’s CEO and
An uncrewed Chinese spacecraft on Wednesday successfully entered orbit around Mars after a 6-1/2-month journey from Earth, China’s space agency said, in the country’s first independent mission to the red planet. The robotic probe carried out a 15-minute burn of its thrusters at 7:52pm Beijing time (5:22pm IST), the China National Space Administration said in a