Category: Tech

Faridabad will have a ₹200 crore waste-to-methanol plant by December 2023. The Municipal Corporation of Gurugram (MCG) is likely to sign an agreement soon with its door-to-door waste collection concessionaire Ecogreen to ensure the waste is not sent to landfill and is directly sent to the plant instead.

The MCG has identified eight acres of land in Sihi, Faridabad, for the plant, which will be used to convert 500 tonnes of waste into 50 kilo-litres of methanol daily. Methanol is commonly used as a fuel, antifreeze and as solvent.

The Government of Haryana will supply water and power to the plant at a subsidised rate. The concessionaire must obtain environmental clearance and a licence for sale of methanol. MCG Joint Commissioner Naresh Kumar said the project was finalised this month and Ecogreen will start construction by the first week of December. He added that this will also resolve issues at material recovery facilities (MRFs) where waste is brought in a segregated manner to be further segregated into various categories according to their reusability and recyclability. Glass, plastic, metal, paper, cardboard, and rubber waste materials will be recycled at the plant. The senior official said, it will be a step towards decentralising the waste collection process in the city and reducing the amount of waste that is transported to dumping sites.

Sanjay Sharma, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Ecogreen Energy, said they have collaborated with an Indo-Japanese company to set up the plant.

Bengaluru-based Indian space technology start-up, Pixxel will launch its third hyperspectral satellite, Anand, onboard ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) from Sriharikota spaceport on Saturday.

The hyperspectral microsatellite – with weight less than 15 kg and wavelengths more than 150 – can capture Earth’s images in greater detail than other non-hyperspectral satellites with wavelengths not more than 10. These images can be used to detect pest infestation, map forest fires, identify soil stress and oil slicks, to name a few.

In April, Pixxel became the first Indian company to launch a commercial satellite, named Shakuntala, using Elon Musk’s SpaceX’s Falcon-9 rocket. Its hyperspectral satellites can provide hundreds of bands of information with global coverage at a very high frequency. These satellites are equipped to beam down up to 50 times more information with unprecedented detail than other conventional satellites in orbit, and are ideal for disaster relief, agricultural monitoring, energy monitoring and urban planning applications, the company said in a statement.

Pixxel has already inked partnerships with Anglo-Australian multinational mining company Rio Tinto and Australian precision agriculture company Data Farming, to use hyperspectral datasets to identify mineral resources and monitoring active and determining crop issues, respectively. The state-up envisions building a health monitor for the planet through a constellation of cutting-edge hyperspectral small satellites in space.

US Space agency NASA’s Orion capsule reached the moon on Monday on its way to a record-breaking lunar orbit. It is the first time a capsule has visited the moon since NASA’s Apollo programme 50 years ago, and represents a huge milestone in the $4.1bn test flight that began last Wednesday.

The close approach of 130 km (81 miles) occurred on Monday, as the crew capsule and its three wired-up dummies were on the far side of the moon. Due to a half-hour communication blackout, flight controllers did not know if the critical engine firing went well until the capsule emerged from behind the moon. The capsule sped up well beyond 8,000 km/h (5,000 mph) as it regained radio contact, NASA said. Less than an hour later, the capsule flew above Tranquility Base, where US astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on July 20, 1969.

Orion is part of NASA’s Artemis programme, which aims to put the first woman and the first person of colour on the moon in the next few years. It was sent atop NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), from Cape Canaveral, Florida, US, early Wednesday morning, for a lunar orbit. On Saturday, Orion sent back its first photos of the moon. Later, the capsule’s cameras sent back a picture of the Earth — a tiny blue globe surrounded by blackness.

India’s first privately developed rocket, Vikram-S, will be launched from the Indian Space Research Organisation’s launch pad at Sriharikota on Tuesday, November 15, said Hyderabad-based space start-up Skyroot Aerospace.

The rocket is part of the maiden mission of Skyroot Aerospace, Prarambh (the beginning), which will carry payloads of two Indian and one foreign customers. The Chennai-based aerospace start-up, Spacekidz will fly ‘Fun-Sat’, a 2.5 kg payload developed by students from India, the US, Singapore and Indonesia on the sub-orbital flight on board Vikram-S.

With this mission, Skyroot will become the first private space company in India to launch a rocket into space. Tuesday’s launch will begin a new era for the Indian space sector, which was opened in 2020 to private players.

Skyroot was the first start-up to sign a memorandum of understanding with ISRO for launching its rockets. The Hyderabad-based venture aims to disrupt entry barriers to cost-efficient satellite launch services and space-flight by advancing its mission to make spaceflights affordable, reliable and regular for all, the venture said in a statement. Established in 2018, it has successfully built and tested India’s first privately developed cryogenic, hypergolic-liquid, and solid fuel-based rocket engines using advanced composite and 3D-printing technologies.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is prepared for the first runway landing experiment (RLV-LEX) of Reusable Launch Vehicle – Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD) from aeronautical test range in Chitradurga, Karnataka. The ISRO Chairman S Somanath said that the weather is being monitored.

The ISRO officials informed that the RLV wing body will be carried to an altitude of 3-5 km by a helicopter and dropped at about 4-5 km ahead of the runway with a horizontal velocity. After the release, the RLV will glide, steer towards the runway, and land with a landing gear in the defence airfield near Chitradurga. New systems such as landing gear, parachute, hook beam assembly, radar altimeter and pseudolite have been developed for the successful completion of the experiment.

ISRO successfully achieved its maiden RLV-TD HEX-01 (Hypersonic Flight Experiment-01) mission on May 23, 2016, from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota Range, and demonstrated the critical technologies for design and flight testing of re-entry vehicles. While that was a suborbital flight and designed to land on sea, the new experiment will demonstrate the approach and autonomous landing on a runway.

To acquire end-to-end RLV technology capability, RLV-LEX must be achieved before the RLV ORE (Orbital Re-Entry Experiment) mission, ISRO officials say.

In an attempt to revolutionise treatments for people with blood disorders, scientists in the United Kingdom have transfused lab-grown blood into people. While the bulk of blood transfusions will always depend on human donors, the eventual goal of the world’s first clinical trial of lab-grown blood is to manufacture vital, ultra-rare blood groups that are hard to find, said the UK researchers. 

The research project combines teams in Bristol, Cambridge, London, and at NHS Blood and Transplant. It focuses on the red blood cells (RBCs) that carry oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body. The lab-grown blood could prove to be beneficial for people who depend on regular blood transfusions for conditions such as sickle cell anaemia, believe the scientists.

The researchers started with a normal donation of a pint of blood (around 470ml) and used magnetic beads to pull out flexible stem cells that are capable of becoming a red blood cell (RBC). These stem cells are then grown in large numbers in the lab. The process takes about three weeks and a pool of about half a million stem cells results in 50 billion RBCs. From these cells, the scientists choose around 15 billion RBCs that are at the right stage of development to transplant.

India on Wednesday successfully conducted the flight test of phase-II ballistic missile defence interceptor, AD-1 missile, off Odisha coast.

The AD-1 interceptor missile is one of the two interceptor missiles of the Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) Phase 2 system. The second interceptor missile, AD-2, is still under development.

The AD-1 is a long-range interceptor missile designed for both “low exo-atmospheric” and “endo-atmospheric” interception of long-range ballistic missiles and aircraft. It would be able to intercept ballistic missiles with a range of around 3,000 kilometers. AD-2 will be able to handle higher-flying, longer-range missiles, and would likely be a pure exo-atmospheric interceptor. Together, both the missiles can bring down ballistic missiles up to a 5,000-kilometer range.

The newly tested missile is propelled by a two-stage solid motor, and equipped with indigenously-developed advanced control system, navigation and guidance algorithm to precisely guide the vehicle to the target. The Defence Ministry carried out its maiden test with participation of all BMD weapon system elements located at different geographical locations.

DRDO’s BMD Phase 2 can defend against missiles with ranges greater than 2,000 kilometers that can also deploy decoys or maneuvers.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for the C-295 transport aircraft manufacturing facility at Vadodara, Gujarat, on October 30, 2022. The facility will be set up by Tata Advanced Systems Ltd (TASL) and Airbus Defence and Space. The C-295 will replace the Avro aircraft in service with IAF.

The joint venture between Airbus and TASL will manufacture 40 C-295 military transport planes at the new facility as part of a Rs.22,000 crore deal to supply 56 aircraft. The other 16 planes will be supplied by Airbus from Spain. In addition to 40 aircraft, the facility at Vadodara would be manufacturing additional aircraft for Air Force requirements and exports.

Speaking at the occasion, the Prime Minister called the aircraft manufacturing facility India’s giant leap towards becoming self-reliant in the aviation sector. He said that India is going to be a major hub for building large aircraft, both passenger and cargo planes.

With the launch of the C295 aircraft manufacturing facility, India will join countries like the US, the UK, Japan, Russia, France, Italy, Spain, Ukraine, Brazil and China, who have the capacity to manufacture military transport aircraft.

In a historic mission, Indian Space Research Organisations’ heaviest rocket, LVM3-M2, on its very first commercial mission on Sunday, successfully placed 36 broadband communication satellites of a UK-based customer into the desired orbits, the space agency said.

OneWeb Ltd is the UK-based customer of NewSpace India Ltd (NSIL), ISRO’s commercial arm, and a global communication network powered from space, activating internet connectivity for governments and businesses. Bharti Enterprises is one of the key investors in OneWeb.

With Sunday’s success, ISRO put behind the divergence experienced in its Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) mission, on August 7, which made the satellites unfit to be used.

Early on Sunday, a smiling ISRO Chairman S Somanath announced Deepavali had begun early for the scientists at the space agency.

“LVM3 M2/OneWeb India-1 mission is completed successfully. All 36 satellites have been placed into their intended orbits. @NSIL_India @OneWeb,” ISRO said in a tweet, just a little while after Somanath announced that 16 satellites had been injected into the intended orbits while the remaining would take some more time.

All 36 satellites were placed into the orbits around one hour and fifteen minutes after the rocket blasted off from the spaceport.

Addressing the crowd at the Mission Control Centre, Somanath said the festival celebrations started at Satish Dhawan Space Centre as LVM3, in its maiden commercial mission, entered orbit accurately.

Saudi Arabian Airlines, Saudia has signed an agreement with German air taxi manufacturer Lilium to buy up to 100 of its aircraft for use on Saudia’s domestic network, the state carrier’s chief executive said on Wednesday.

Saudia CEO Ibrahim Koshy said the planes would be “a premium service” that could carry four to six passengers, adding “it shows Saudia’s commitment to sustainability because we’re talking about 100% electric aircraft and we are the first airline in the MENA region that’s introducing this as part of their network.” He added that certification by Saudi regulators is expected in 2025, and they have not yet finalized pricing because commercial terms have not been decided upon.

After the announcement, Koshy said in an interview, “in the course of this year, Saudia will be looking at an operational commercial network. “We’ll also be looking at the infrastructure that’s required.” The aircraft do not require airports because they are eVTOLs.

Koshy, speaking at Saudi Arabia’s flagship investment conference FII, on Tuesday, added that Public and private investors would have an opportunity to build such infrastructure.

Saudia is holding a conversation with planemakers Airbus and Boeing on orders for itself and a new carrier the kingdom plans to launch, provisionally named RIA.