Astronauts Being Trained For Mission To Look For Minerals, Get Info On How To Destroy It. Washington: Nasa is reportedly training a team of astronauts for a mission to land on an asteroid by the end of the next decade. The US space agency is training the astronauts to land on an asteroid to explore its surface, search for minerals and even learn the skills they may need to destroy it should one pose a threat to the Earth, ‘The Daily Telegraph’ reported.

Met chief says El Nino may affect showers
The monsoon is likely to hit the southern tip of the country on time in the first week of June, said India’s top weather department official on Thursday, a week before the official forecast, lifting hopes of better farm output for the third successive year and a chance to rein in food inflation.
“It will hit Kerala in the first week of June with an error window of 2-3 days,” said India Meteorological Department director general LS Rathore.

India’s Cabinet has given its approval to a “National Monsoon Mission,” which will equip the weather department with high-end computers, radars and scientific manpower to generate more detailed and accurate forecasts.

India’s current antiquated methods of forecasting the all-important monsoon rains is getting a re-vamp.

No other weather phenomenon generates as much excitement among policymakers and economists, given that it holds the key to farm output, a sector employing half the country’s workforce.

Washington: Earth-like rocky planets that humans could live on may be more common in the universe than stars, says an international team of planetary scientists which included an Indian-origin researcher. Aditya Chopra at Australian National University and colleagues claim that determining whether these planets are habitable has become the new holy grail of astronomy.

India today successfully launched its first indigenous day-night and all-weather radar imaging satellite RISAT-1. It is slated to boost country's remote-sensing capabilities and facilitate agriculture and disaster management. Till now, India depended on images from a Canadian satellite as existing domestic remote-sensing spacecraft cannot take pictures of the earth during cloud cover. "The satellite can give valuable data like soil moisture, glacier positions and other details," Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman K Radhakrishnan said.

IMD, however, cautions that the monsoon may weaken in August-September due to atmospheric changes in the tropical Pacific
India is expected to have a normal monsoon for the third consecutive year, boosting prospects of good harvests and higher rural incomes.