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Virgin Galactic's First Fully Crewed Spaceflight

 Today’s flight was the 22nd test flight of VSS Unity and the first test flight with a full crew in the cabin, including the Company’s founder, Sir Richard Branson. The crew fulfilled a number of test objectives related to the cabin and customer experience, including evaluating the commercial customer cabin, the views of Earth from space, the conditions for conducting research and the effectiveness of the five-day pre-flight training program at Spaceport America. Michael Colglazier, Chief Executive Officer of Virgin Galactic, said: “Today is a landmark achievement for the Company and a historic moment for the new commercial space industry. With each successful mission we are paving the way for the next generation of astronauts. I want to thank our talented team, including our pilots and crew, whose dedication and commitment made today possible. They are helping open the door for greater access to space – so it can be for the many and not just for the few.” VSS Unity achieved a spee...

World Cheapest Smartphone || JIO Phone Next

During the 44th Annual General Meeting, Reliance Industries chairman, Mr Mukesh Ambani announced the upcoming budget-friendly smartphone called Jio Phone Next. As announced last year, the device runs on a custom version of Android OS which has been specifically designed for the Indian smartphone market, focussing on feature phone users. Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, also made an appearance at the launch event. Keep reading to know the Jio Phone Next launch date.  The Jio Phone Next launch date has been set for September 10, on the auspicious occasion of Ganesh Chaturthi. The announcement also adds that the Jio Phone Next would be available across India, and can be purchased offline through the Jio Stores, the authorized Jio retail stores. Given the price and the feature set of the phone, a heavy demand might make it tough for a customer to get their hands on the device.  Jio Phone Next price was not revealed at the time of announcement. However, the company did announce that they...

China Reports First Human Case Of H10N3 Bird Flu || New Virus found in china 2021

 A 41-year-old man from China's Zhenjiang city has become the first human to be infected with the H10N3 strain of bird flu in the world. China has reported the first case of human infection with the H10N3 strain of bird flu from the country's eastern Jiangsu province, China's National Health Commission said on Tuesday. The patient, a 41-year-old man from Zhenjiang city, is currently in a stable condition and meets discharge standards, the state-run CGTN TV reported. Health authorities played down the outbreak, saying the case was a sporadic virus transmission from poultry to humans, and the risk of causing a pandemic was extremely low. The patient was diagnosed as having the H10N3 avian influenza virus on May 28, National Health Commission said in a statement without elaborating on how the man had got infected with the virus. H10N3 is a low pathogenic or relatively less severe strain of the virus in poultry and the risk of it spreading on a large scale is very low. There ar...

NASA Mars Flight

he helicopter will rise for about six seconds, hover and rotate for about 30 seconds, then go back down. The flight will be autonomous, pre-programmed into the aircraft because of the 15 minutes it takes for signals to travel from Earth to Mars. Ingenuity itself will analyze its position with respect to the Martian surface. After the flight, Ingenuity will send Perseverance technical data on what it has done, and that information will be transmitted back to Earth. This will include a black and white photo of the Martian surface that Ingenuity is programmed to snap while flying. Later, once its batteries have charged up again, Ingenuity is to transmit another photo -- in color, of the Martian horizon, taken with a different camera. But the most spectacular images are supposed to come from the rover Perseverance, which will film the flight from a few meters away. Shortly after this filming, six videos of 2.5 seconds each will be sent to Earth. NASA hopes at least one of them will show th...

ISRO demonstrate Quantum Communication Breakthrough

Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) announced that it has successfully demonstrated free-space Quantum Communication over a distance of 300 m. According to ISRO, this is a major milestone for unconditionally secured satellite data communication using quantum technologies. With this breakthrough, India joins a handful of other nations such as the US, the UK, Canada, China and Japan who have made significant contributions in the field of quantum communication. ISRO demonstrated their quantum capabilities by live video conferencing using quantum-key-encrypted signals. The free-space quantum key distribution(QKD) was demonstrated at Space Applications Centre (SAC), Ahmedabad, between two line-of-sight buildings within the campus. The experiment was performed at night to ensure that there is no interference of the direct sunlight. Most of the mission critical technologies used in the experiments were built by ISRO in-house, which includes the NAVIC receiver for time synchronization be...

NASA-ISRO SAR Mission (NISAR)

 The NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR) Mission will measure Earth’s changing ecosystems, dynamic surfaces, and ice masses providing information about biomass, natural hazards, sea level rise, and groundwater, and will support a host of other applications. NISAR will observe Earth’s land and ice-covered surfaces globally with 12-day regularity on ascending and descending passes, sampling Earth on average every 6 days for a baseline 3-year mission. Quick Facts Artist's Concept of NISAR spacecraft Artist's Concept Planned Launch Date: 2022 The NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR) Mission will measure Earth’s changing ecosystems, dynamic surfaces, and ice masses providing information about biomass, natural hazards, sea level rise, and groundwater, and will support a host of other applications. NISAR will observe Earth’s land and ice-covered surfaces globally with 12-day regularity on ascending and descending passes, sampling Earth on average every 6 days for a baseline 3-year mission. Launch and Deploy Anima...

NASA Perseverance Rover Lands Successfully on Mars

  Mission managers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California quickly received data from Mars satellites and the rover itself confirming a good touchdown, including the first images from Perseverance: scenes of a desolate, dusty landscape that looks dangerous to humans but full of potential for this scientist-explorer. "We got it. We're there," JPL Chief Engineer Rob Manning, who has worked on Mars landings for decades, said after landing. "This is so exciting and the team is beside themselves. This is so surreal. So much has been riding on this." Just minutes after the landing, Perseverance continued sending images from its hazard-detecting navigational cameras. The 2,200-pound rover, nearly identical though slightly larger than its 2012 Curiosity predecessor, has several suites of onboard instruments that will be used to find, analyze, and store rock samples. A drill on the end of its "arm" is designed to grab core samples, while systems t...

ISRO, MapmyIndia collaborate to imagery and earth observation data

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 Excutive Director, Rohan Verma. He termed it a path-breaking milestone in India's journey towards 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat', wherein Indian users would not be dependent on foreign organisations for maps, navigation and geospatial services, and leverage made-in-India solutions instead. "You don't need Google Maps/Earth any longer", Verma said in the headline in an article on LinkedIn. According to ISRO, the Department of Space (DoS) -- ISRO comes under it -- has joined hands with MapmyIndia to combine their geospatial expertise and build holistic solu...

World 1st Biofuel Rockets Stardust 1.0

Stardust 1.0 was launched from Loring Commerce Centre in Maine, US, a former military base, becoming the first commercial space launch powered by biofuel, which is non-toxic for the environment as opposed to traditionally used rocket fuels.  Sunday’s launch marks another historic first for Maine since Stardust 1.0 has become the first commercial rocket launch for the state located in northeastern US. Stardust 1.0 is a launch vehicle suited for student and budget payloads. The rocket is 20 feet tall and has a mass of roughly 250 kg. The rocket can carry a maximum payload mass of 8 kg and during its first launch carried three payloads. According to a report in Politico, the payloads included a cubesat prototype built by highschool students, a metal alloy designed to lessen vibrations, which is developed by Kellogg’s Research Labs and a cubesat from software company Rocket Insights. These rockets will help to launch small satellites called cubesats into space in a way that is relative...

India To Set Up First Quantum Computing Lab With AWS

The  Quantum Computing Applications Lab will provide quantum computing as a service to government ministries and departments, researchers, scientists, academia, and developers, to enable advances in areas such as manufacturing, healthcare, agriculture, and aerospace engineering. AWS will provide hosting with technical and programmatic support for the Lab. The government body said that the Quantum Computing Applications Lab will work with subject matter experts from the government sector to define the problem statements, and make them public, inviting applications from researchers, academia, and organizations to address them. It will then provide select applicants with access to quantum computing hardware, simulators, and programming tools, on-demand and at no cost, via Amazon Braket that enables scientists and developers to build algorithms, conduct advanced simulations, and run experiments. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) on Tuesday announced it will...