Category: Tech

Japan-based global data centre and telecommunications company NTT has outlined plans to invest Rs 2,000 crore in a hyperscale data centre in Kolkata over the next few years, said Shekhar Sharma, Chief Executive Officer, NTT Global Data Centers & Cloud Infrastructure India and NTT Communications India on February 13. This investment is part of the ongoing $2.5 billion total investment plan of the company in India announced about two years ago.

NTT Limited shared plans to build three data centres in Kolkata with a cumulative capacity of 25MW IT load; the first building will be on ground in 12-15 months, said Sharma. At the groundbreaking ceremony of NTT Data Centre Campus at Silicon Valley, he added that the facility is the company’s humble start for an important milestone. The campus on a 7.5-acre land would spread over 600,000 sq ft. The first data centre facility on the campus would be spread over 100,000 sq ft and have a capacity of 9MW facility load and 6 MW IT load.

NTT’s existing data centre capacity in India stands at 230 MW of operational load, spread over 2.1 million sq ft across 12 facilities in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi NCR and Chennai. The company is expanding its data centre capacity to more than 1,500MW of critical IT load, including planned capacities, in over 20 countries.

Saudi Arabia will send its first ever woman astronaut on a space mission later this year.

Rayyana Barnawi will join fellow Saudi male astronaut Ali Al-Qarni on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS) during the second quarter of 2023, the official Saudi Press Agency said on February 12. The astronauts will join the crew of the AX-2 space mission and the space flight will launch from the USA, the agency added.

With the launch, Saudi Arabia will become the second Arab country after its neighbour the United Arab Emirates to send its citizens into space. In 2019, Emirati astronaut Hazzaa al-Mansoori spent eight days on the ISS. Another Emirati astronaut, Sultan al-Neyadi will make a voyage to space later this month. He will become the first Arab astronaut to spend six months in space when he takes off for the ISS aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

In 1985, Saudi royal Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, an air force pilot, became a part of a US-organised space mission, becoming the first Arab Muslim to travel into space. In 2018, Saudi Arabia set up a space programme, and last year launched another to send astronauts into space under the Vision 2030 agenda championed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for economic diversification.

The research agency of US Department of Defense, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) said on February 13 that a modified F-16 fighter jet had completed an Artificial Intelligence-controlled test flight for the first time in history.

The F-16 was modified and upgraded to an all-new configuration that came to be known as the X-62A Variable In-flight Simulation Test Aircraft or VISTA. It was reportedly flown by an artificial intelligence for 17 hours.

In early December 2022, Alternating Conditional Expectations (ACE) algorithm developers uploaded their AI software into a specially modified F-16 test aircraft known as the X-62A or VISTA at the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base California, and flew multiple flights over several days, read DARPA press release. The flights demonstrated that AI agents can control a full-scale fighter jet and provided invaluable live-flight data.

A unique training aircraft VISTA was created by Lockheed Martin Skunk Works in association with Calspan Corporation. It had software that enabled it to replicate the performance characteristics of other aircraft, including flight control capabilities. It was built on an open systems design.

The autonomous test flight is a breakthrough for DARPA’s ACE program, which started taking shape in 2019. It was based on the concept of man-machine cooperation in dog fighting. The Pentagon is integrating AI into more than 600 projects, including ACE, to bolster the nation’s defense capabilities.

The United States Air Force’s newest fifth-generation fighters F-35A Lightning II and F-35 Joint Strike Fighter made a debut at Aero India 2023 on February 13-17.

Arguably the world’s most advanced fifth-generation fighters, the aircraft arrived at Yelahanka Air Force Station in Bengaluru after their respective journeys from Utah and Alaska air force bases in the USA. Sending a wave of excitement through the crowds at the exposition, the fighter jets were a sight for selfie-clicking. The planes will conduct daily aerial demonstrations at Aero India 2023, a five-day marquee event.

“The F-35’s engine produces 43,000 pounds of thrust and consists of a three-stage fan, a six-stage compressor, an annular combustor, a single stage high-pressure turbine, and a two-stage low-pressure turbine,” said the US statement.

After inaugurating Asia’s largest air show ‘Aero India 2023’ at the Yelahanka Air Force station complex on the outskirts of Bengaluru, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the biennial expo, which was earlier considered just a window to “sell to India”, is showcasing the nation’s strength as a potential defence partner and noted that India is now exporting defence equipment to 75 countries. India’s defence exports have increased six times in the last five years and it has crossed the figure of $1.5 billion in its exports, added PM Modi.

The Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has announced that air taxis will start operating in Dubai by 2026.

The UAE premier also approved the designs of four aerial taxi “vertiports”, one of which will be located near Dubai International Airport. The air taxi fare would be initially high but could be in the range of an Uber eventually, media reports stated.

Sheikh Mohammed made the announcement on Twitter, where he revealed that he had approved designs for air taxi stations at the World Government Summit in Dubai this week. A video with the tweet said, “RTA has been working with advanced air mobility companies Skyports Infrastructure and Joby Aviation to design and develop the infrastructure for an expected launch of electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) operations by 2026.”

The video also said that Dubai is set to become the world’s first city with a fully developed network of vertiports. The initial launch will connect four main areas, near Dubai International Airport, Downtown Dubai, Palm Jumeirah and Dubai Marina. Safe and efficient aircraft — each with a pilot and four passengers, 241 km range and a 300 kph top speed — will offer passengers a “smooth end-to-end passenger journey” with zero operating emissions, it added.

Chinese scientists have cloned three “super cows” that are able to produce 18,000 litres of milk per year and over 100,000 litres of milk in their lifetimes. The accomplishment may help reduce China’s dependency on imported dairy cows, say experts.

For cloning, the scientists from the Northwest University of Agricultural and Forestry Science and Technology took somatic cells from the ears of highly productive Dutch Holstein Frisian cattle and placed them in surrogate cows, read a news release from the university. This technique of somatic cell nuclear transfer was the same used to create Dolly the sheep in 1996, the world’s first cloned mammal.

The milk produced from the clones is no different from that produced by their originals, said an expert involved in the experiment. Once the cloned calves reach two years of age, they can begin producing milk for the market, he added.

Mr Jin Yaping, the project’s lead scientist, said that cloning “super cows” would allow China to preserve its best dairy breeds and avoid the bio-security risk presented by importing live cows from other countries. China currently imports around 70 per cent of its dairy cows. “We plan to raise a herd of 1,000 super cows in two to three years. This will provide key support in creating our own breeding bulls and dairy cows, thus easing China’s dependency on importing cattle,” he said.

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune is working on India’s first indigenous family of microprocessors. C-DAC’s roadmap for processors is aimed at helping the country become self-reliant in microprocessors development using indigenous design.

C-DAC has made significant progress in the development of the VEGA series of dual-core and quad-core microprocessors, and two designs are ready for fabrication, said Director General Magesh Ethirajan. The first one is a 32-bit embedded processor which could be used in smart energy meters, smart water and gas meters, Internet of Things devices, multimedia processing and AR/VR applications.

“It is a low-power, low-footprint and low-cost chip, which could be deployed for wider applications,” he said. The technology has been developed and distributed to institutes for further development. They had set an ambitious target of meeting at least 10% of the country’s microprocessor requirement, Ethirajan said.

The country depends on imports for its microprocessors and C-DAC wanted to reduce this dependence. Apart from C-DAC’s Vega series of processors, IIT Madras has developed the Shakti series of microprocessors and has also made significant progress in this initiative of making the country self-reliant. C-DAC has also developed another microprocessor Teja, which is a high-end 64-bit chip 180-nanometer technology.

Astronomers have observed 12 additional moons orbiting Jupiter, bringing its total number of confirmed moons to 92. The king of the planets, Jupiter is the largest one in our solar system and now also the one with the most known moons.

The discovery was made during observations by astronomer Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science and his team. The team used technologies like the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii in September 2021 and the Dark Energy Camera located on the Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile in August 2022. The Dark Energy Camera can survey the sky for faint objects.

Jupiter and its natural satellites were in alignment with more distant targets that Sheppard and his team had been seeking in the Kuiper Belt, which is a doughnut-shaped ring of icy objects circling the sun that’s located past the orbit of Neptune on the edge of the solar system.

Finding additional moons around Jupiter and determining their orbits could help identify targets for future missions. The European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, scheduled for launch in April, and NASA’s Europa Clipper mission, expected to launch in 2024, will visit Jupiter and some of its moons in this decade. The missions might be able to swing by the newly discovered moons on their way.

NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR), an Earth science satellite being jointly built by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), got a send-off ceremony in California before it shipped out to India.

ISRO Chairman S Somanath, JPL Director Laurie Leshin, and dignitaries from NASA headquarters, including Bhavya Lal, NASA’s associate administrator for technology, policy, and strategy were present at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for the send-off.

Outside the facility, NASA’s NISAR Project Manager Phil Barela and ISRO’s NISAR Project Director CV Shrikant ceremonially broke fresh coconuts. The tradition, common in India, often marks auspicious occasions and signifies hope for a smooth road ahead. Leshin also presented the ISRO delegation with a jar of JPL lucky peanuts.

The NISAR mission, planned to launch in 2024, will provide critical information on Earth’s crust, ice sheets, and ecosystems. It is expected to systematically map Earth, using two different radar frequencies to monitor resources such as water, forests and agriculture. The mission will provide important Earth science data related to ecosystems, Earth’s surface, natural hazards, sea level rise and the cryosphere. Leshin said that NASA’s collaboration with ISRO exemplifies what’s possible when we tackle complex challenges together.

In Dubai, businesses across industries are betting big on robotics and automation (R&A), with billions of dollars being reserved for the implementation of these emerging technologies to boost productivity and efficiency. With the opportunities in the area of robotics and automation expected to grow considerably over the next decade, the emirate is setting its sights on becoming a key global player in the industry. It aims for the sector to contribute 9% to its gross domestic product (GDP) in the next 10 years.  

Under this vision, Dubai is making a concerted effort to develop a world-class robotics ecosystem in the UAE. This includes several government initiatives, such as the introduction of the Dubai R&A Program, the Emirates Robotics Competition, and the first Roboday event, which took place on January 18, 2023.

“We seek to make Dubai one of the world’s top 10 cities in Robotics and Automation by adopting and developing advanced robotics technologies, empowering national talent, and generating innovative new solutions, products, and services,” Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai, Chairman of The Executive Council of Dubai and Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Dubai Future Foundation, said during the launch of the Dubai R&A Program.