James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the space observatory designed to conduct infrared astronomy and launched successfully on 25 December 2021 will enable two research teams to study earliest galaxies in the universe. The research teams will use JWST’s powerful...
One of the most beautiful things about mother Earth is presence of an atmosphere. Life on Earth would not have been possible without the lively sheet of air that completely embraces Earth from all around. In the early phase...
India’s lunar lander Vikram (with rover Pragyan) of Chandrayaan-3 mission has safely soft landed at high latitude lunar surface on south pole along with respective payloads. This is first lunar mission to land on high latitude lunar south pole...
The first detection of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of a planet outside the solar system, the first image of an exoplanet by JWST, the first image of an exoplanet ever taken at deep infrared wavelength, the first detection of...
NASA’s mission update on 05th August 2023 said Voyager 2 communications has paused. Communications should resume once the spacecraft’s antenna is realigned with Earth in mid-October 2023.
On 4th August 2023, NASA had reestablished full communications with Voyager 2...
Chandrayaan-3 moon mission will demonstrate ''soft lunar landing'' capability of ISRO. This mission will also demonstrate lunar roving and conduct in-situ scientific experiments. The mission is a steppingstone towards ISRO’s future interplanetary missions.
India’s space agency ISRO has successfully launched...
Between 1958 and 1978, USA and former USSR sent 59 and 58 moon missions respectively. The lunar race between the two ceased in 1978. End of cold war and collapse of former Soviet Union and subsequent emergence of new...
NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission, OSIRIS-REx, launched seven years ago in 2016 to near-Earth asteroid Bennu has delivered the asteroid sample that it collected in 2020 to Earth on 24th September 2023. After releasing the asteroid sample into...
Radio frequency based deep space communication faces constraints due to low bandwidth and increasing need of high data transmission rates. Laser or optical based system has potential to break the communication constraints. NASA has tested laser communications against extreme...
Total solar eclipse will be observed in North America continent on Monday 8th April 2024. Beginning Mexico, it will move across the United States from Texas to Maine, ending in Canada’s Atlantic coast.
In the USA, while the partial solar...
Astronomers have detected the oldest (and the most distant) black hole from the early universe which dates from 400 million years after the big bang. Surprisingly, this is about a few million times the mass of Sun. Under the...
On 27 January 2024, an airplane-sized, near-Earth asteroid 2024 BJ will pass Earth at a closest distance of 354,000 Km.
It will come as close as 354,000 Km, about 92% the average lunar distance.
The closest encounter of 2024 BJ with the Earth...
In the last 500 million years, there have been at least five episodes of mass extinctions of life-forms on the Earth when more than three-quarters of the existing species got eliminated. The last such large-scale life extinction occurred due...
Two decades ago, two Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars on 3rd and 24th January 2004, respectively to look for evidence that water once flowed on the surface of the Red Planet. Designed to last just 3...
The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission has received the go ahead of European Space Agency (ESA). This paves the way for developing the instruments and spacecrafts commencing January 2025. The mission is led by ESA and is a...
Astronomers have recently reported detection of such a compact object of about 2.35 solar masses in the globular cluster NGC 1851 in our home galaxy Milkyway. Because this is at the lower end of “black hole mass-gap", this compact object...
JAXA, Japan’s space agency has successfully soft landed “Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM)” on lunar surface. This makes Japan fifth country to have lunar soft-landing capability, after the US, the Soviet Union, China and India.
The mission aims to...
Stars have a life cycle spanning a few million to trillions of years. They are born, undergo changes with the passage of time and finally meet their end when fuel runs out to become a very dense remanent body....
The solar observatory spacecraft, Aditya-L1 was successfully inserted in Halo-Orbit about 1.5 million km away from earth on 6th January 2024. It was launched on 2nd September 2023 by ISRO.
The Halo orbit is a periodic, three-dimensional orbit at Lagrangian point L1 involving Sun, Earth...
ISRO has successfully launched the satellite XPoSat which is world’s second ‘X-ray Polarimetry Space Observatory’. This will carry out research in space-based polarisation measurements of X-ray emission from various cosmic sources. Earlier, NASA had sent ‘Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer...
Fast Radio Burst FRB 20220610A, the most powerful radio burst ever observed was detected on 10 June 2022. It had originated from a source that existed 8.5 billion years ago when the universe was just 5 billion years old...
LignoSat2, the first wooden artificial satellite developed by Kyoto University’s Space Wood Laboratory is scheduled to be jointly launched by JAXA and NASA this year will have outside structure made of Magnolia wood.
It will be a small-sized satellite (nanosat)....
UAE’s MBR Space Centre has collaborated with NASA to provide an airlock for the first lunar space station Gateway that will orbit the Moon to support long-term exploration of the Moon under NASA’s Artemis Interplanetary Mission. An Air lock is an...
In a study reported recently, astronomers observed the SN 1987A remnant using James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The results showed emission lines of ionized argon and other heavily ionised chemical species from the centre of the nebula around SN...
The lunar lander, ‘Peregrine Mission One,’ built by ‘Astrobotic Technology’ under NASA’s ‘Commercial Lunar Payload Services’ (CLPS) initiative was launched into space on 8 January 2024. The spacecraft has since suffered propellant leak. Hence, Peregrine 1 can no longer soft...
