Virgin Galactic’s rocket-powered plane, VSS Unity, successfully took three customers and three crew members to the edge of space on June 29. The vessel took off along a support plane, Eve, and separated in mid-air, firing its rocket to climb almost vertically towards the edge of space. At the peak of the flight, with the rocket shut down, the crew experienced a few minutes of weightlessness before the Unity shifted into re-entry mode and began its gliding descent back to Earth. The entire flight lasted about 75 minutes. Unity touched down safely at Spaceport America in New Mexico. The pl
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur has successfully conducted a test flight for cloud seeding, the premier institution said in a statement issued on June 22. Cloud seeding involves using many chemical agents such as silver iodide, dry ice, common salt, and other elements with the aim of enhancing the probability of rains. The Computer Science and Engineering Department of IIT Kanpur initiated the cloud seeding project a few years ago. The test flight on June 21 went up to an approximate height of 5,000 feet. It landed on the IIT Kanpur lab airstrip after successfully completing the r
Mahindra Defence Systems (MDS) has started the deliveries of Armado – a modular type vehicle that can be upgraded or configured to suit a wide variety of operational roles – to the Indian armed forces. Armado, an Armoured Light Specialist Vehicle (ALSV) designed and developed by Mahindra & Mahindra, can be used in counter-terrorist operations such as patrolling high-intensity areas, special forces operations and quick reaction teams. Its other uses include being a weapon carrier, a reconnaissance vehicle, a border security vehicle and being used in raids in open or desert terrains.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has helped the Uttar Pradesh Police arrest 87 suspected cheats who appeared as dummy candidates in the Village Development Officer recruitment examination conducted by the Uttar Pradesh Subordinate Services Selection Commission (UPSSSC) on June 27. With the use of advanced AI based face recognition software, the UP Police made the arrests across the state. Those arrested included people who appeared fraudulently in place of actual aspirants for solving the exam. The system reportedly did real-time Aadhaar-based cross-verification of candidates. Maximum of th
Scientists have created a tiny pangolin-inspired magnetic robot that can move around a human body and perform minimally invasive medical procedures. The tiny robot works like an animal and swims around the human body. So far tested on practice tissue, it was found to be capable of heating up hard-to-reach places, such as the stomach and intestines, delivering cargo to tissues and stopping bleeding. The heat could be used for performing cancer treatment or mitigating bleeding. Scientists have long aimed at creating magnetic soft robots made out of soft metals that could navigate around t
Indian space agency, ISRO’s commercial arm NewSpace India will install mobile satellite service (MSS) terminals on at least 1 lakh fishing boats across nine states and four union territories, to help authorities send emergency weather alerts and alert fishermen about international water border violations. India’s indigenous navigation satellite system, Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC) will run the network. NewSpace India Ltd has started selecting private vendors to supply, install and commission MSS terminals for establishing vessel communication and support system in marin
Japanese automaker Suzuki has agreed to jointly start producing flying cars with SkyDrive, a leading flying car start-up in Japan, around the spring of 2024. Flying cars are aircraft that can take off vertically and land using multiple rotors. The vehicles are typically meant for carrying a small number of people. Some of its models are also equipped for use on land. SkyDrive will set up a fully-owned production subsidiary that will assemble vehicles utilising the Suzuki group’s plant in Shizuoka Prefecture in Japan. The announcement comes a day after SkyDrive unveiled at the Paris
Kerala has become the first state in the country to have its own internet service provider, Kerala Fibre Optic Network (KFON). Speaking at the inauguration of the KFON project on June 5, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said that the state is the first in India to declare the internet as a right of the citizens. A public sector initiative, KFON will initially provide internet access to 100 houses in each assembly constituency of Kerala. It aims to end the digital divide by ensuring internet access for all. It has installed IT infrastructure to set up 40 lakh internet connections across t
Scientists at Nasa are testing a new technology that can predict a tsunami with the help of disturbances they create in the Earth’s atmosphere. According to Nasa, the new technology called Guardian (GNSS Upper Atmospheric Real-time Disaster Information and Alert Network) is a hazard-monitoring technology. It uses data from GPS and other satellites to detect real-time positional accuracy down to a few inches, said the scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of Nasa. The technology is also being tested by Nasa’s team of researchers in the Ring of Fire in the Pacific Oc
The James Webb Space Telescope of NASA has captured a picture showing over 45,000 galaxies in a single frame. The image was captured as part of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES) program. The world’s most powerful observatory scanned a patch of sky and came across a star factory packed with galaxies. The image shows a portion of an area of the sky known as GOODS-South, previously observed by the Hubble telescope as well. The JADES program will devote about 32 days of telescope time to uncover and characterise faint, far-off galaxies as astronomers try to understand th