Science

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is raising $750 million (roughly Rs. 6,200 crore) in a new round of funding that values the rocket and satellite company at $137 billion (roughly Rs. 11,33,800 crore) from investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, CNBC reported late Monday. Reuters had reported in November that SpaceX was in talks about an offering of mostly

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will turn its focus on science experiments in 2023 with dedicated missions to the Sun — Aditya — and the moon — Chandrayaan-3 — even as the nascent start-up sector is set to soar in the space applications segment. The upcoming year will also witness a series of experiments on India’s maiden human space

NASA has formally retired its Mars InSight lander, the first robotic probe specially designed to study the deep interior of a distant world, four years after it arrived on the surface of the red planet, the US space agency announced on Wednesday. Mission controllers at NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Los Angeles determined the mission

After a pair of Islamist bombings rocked the south-central Indian city of Hyderabad in 2013, officials rushed to install 5,000 CCTV cameras to bolster security. Now there are nearly 700,000 in and around the metropolis. The most striking symbol of the city’s rise as a surveillance hotspot is the gleaming new Command and Control Center

Nuclear fusion holds huge promise as a source of clean, abundant energy that could power the world. Now, fusion researchers at a national laboratory in the US have achieved something physicists have been working towards for decades, a process known as “ignition”. This step involves getting more energy out from fusion reactions than is put

Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite-based broadband internet system, could become much more accessible in the coming years. The Elon Musk-owned company has reportedly received the go-ahead to launch an additional 7,500 satellites, expanding the Starlink broadband to over 10,000 low-orbiting satellites over the next decade. The new Starlink satellites will help users connect to the satellite-based broadband

A dust devil looks a bit like a tornado, but is weaker and rarely lasts more than about a minute. It is a twisting column of warmed air scooting across sun-heated ground, made visible by the dust that it lofts upwards. Although usually benign, occasionally dust devils can kill. Dust devils have been known to

Oppo announced three new products at its annual technology event Oppo Inno Day 2022 held on Wednesday. The offerings include a pair of assisted reality (aR) glasses dubbed the Oppo Air Glass 2, the OHealth H1 family health monitor, and the MariSilicon Y SoC. The Chinese manufacturer, however, has not announced an official release date

NASA’s Orion capsule made a blisteringly fast return from the Moon Sunday, parachuting into the Pacific off Mexico to conclude a test flight that should clear the way for astronauts on the next lunar flyby. The incoming capsule hit the atmosphere at Mach 32, or 32 times the speed of sound, and endured reentry temperatures

US House Representatives Earl Francis Blumenauer and Adam Schiff want further US Department of Agriculture (USDA) scrutiny of Elon Musk’s Neuralink following a Reuters report that outlined mistakes in the brain chip company’s animal testing program, their offices said on Thursday. Reuters reported on Monday that the USDA’s inspector general is investigating Neuralink for potential

Elon Musk’s Neuralink, a medical device company, is under federal investigation for potential animal-welfare violations amid internal staff complaints that its animal testing is being rushed, causing needless suffering and deaths, according to documents reviewed by Reuters and sources familiar with the investigation and company operations. Neuralink is developing a brain implant it hopes will

Elon Musk said on Wednesday a wireless device developed by his brain chip company Neuralink is expected to begin human clinical trials in six months. The company is developing brain chip interfaces that it says could enable disabled patients to move and communicate again. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area and Austin, Texas, Neuralink

NASA’s Orion spacecraft was placed in lunar orbit Friday, officials said, as the much-delayed Moon mission proceeded successfully. A little over a week after the spacecraft blasted off from Florida bound for the Moon, flight controllers “successfully performed a burn to insert Orion into a distant retrograde orbit,” the US space agency said on its

ISRO on Wednesday announced that RH200, the versatile sounding rocket of the Indian space agency, has registered its 200th consecutive successful launch from the shores of Thumba, Thiruvananthapuram. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has termed it a “historic moment”. It was witnessed by former President Ram Nath Kovind and ISRO chairman S Somanath, among

Spacetech startup Pixxel is set to launch its third hyperspectral satellite – Anand – onboard ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) from the Sriharikota spaceport on Saturday. Anand is a hyperspectral microsatellite weighing less than 15 kg but having more than 150 wavelengths that will enable it to capture images of the earth in greater

The Indian Space Research Organisation will launch PSLV-C54/ EOS-06 mission with Oceansat-3 and eight nano satellites, including one from Bhutan, on board from Sriharikota spaceport on November 26. The launch is scheduled at 11.56am on Saturday, the national space agency said on Sunday. Asked about the passengers aboard the rocket, a senior ISRO official told

India will host a meeting of science ministers from G-20 member nations at Coimbatore in July next year during its presidency of the grouping of the world’s 20 major developed and emerging economies. Besides the Science-20 Summit with the theme ‘Disruptive Science for Innovative and Sustainable Growth’, the science administrators will also host the “Research Innovation

Skin-like electronics combined with Artificial Intelligence are being developed by researchers in order to detect potential emergent health concerns.  The study was published in the journal Matter with the title Intrinsically stretchable neuromorphic devices for on-body processing of health data with artificial intelligence. Although flexible, wearable electronics are becoming increasingly common, they have yet to

India launched its first privately developed rocket, the Vikram-S, on Friday, a milestone in the country’s effort to create a commercial space industry. The 545-kg rocket developed by space startup Skyroot took off from the Indian space agency’s launch site near Chennai. The rocket has the capability of reaching Mach 5 – five times the

Several SpaceX employees who were fired after circulating an open letter calling out CEO Elon Musk’s behaviour have filed a complaint accusing the company of violating labour laws. The complaint, made Wednesday to the National Labor Relations Board, details the aftermath of what allegedly happened inside SpaceX after employees circulated the letter in June, which,