A new multimillion-rand telescope in the Karoo will offer astronomers an unprecedented view of the stars. The MeerLICHT instrument in Sutherland will be specifically linked to the MeerKAT radio telescope array near Carnarvon in the Northern Cape. Unlike its bigger brother SALT (Southern African Large Telescope), the MeerLICHT is meant …
A Russian Soyuz rocket blasted off amid heavy snow in Kazakhstan on Monday morning, beginning a two-day trip to ferry three astronauts to the International Space Station and opening a new era of US dependence on Russia — and eventually on commercial enterprises — for space travel. NASA ended its …
Washington: Astronomers have discovered two clouds of gas which they believe were formed in the first few minutes after the Big Bang that created the universe. The discovery, the first to detect these gas clouds, adds more support to what is already the most widely accepted theory of how our …
As Russia’s space agency struggled Thursday to fix a probe bound for a moon of Mars that instead got stuck in Earth’s orbit, some experts said the chances of saving the $170 million craft looked slim. Roscosmos spokesman Alexei Kuznetsov said efforts to communicate with the unmanned Phobos-Grunt spacecraft hadn’t …
For his paper on ‘dynamics of dark matter’, Jamia Millia Islamia scientist Mohammad Sami will share a citation given by the Nobel Prize committee for the year 2011. Sami co-authored the paper with Edmund J Copeland and Shinji Tsujikawa and did the research work on the paper while he was …
Bhopal : A Geo-Special Fair is being organized in the capital from November 06th till November 11th under the joint direction of Indian Society of Remote Sensing and Madhya Pradesh Council of Science and Technology. In this fair, Astrophysical experts from all over the country will show up. General Director …
China today successfully launched an unmanned spacecraft for its maiden docking mission, paving the way for its first space station by 2020 to rival Mir, the space lab being run by Russian and US astronauts. The launch of unmanned spacecraft Shenzhou-8 in the early hours today from Jiuquan Satellite Launch …
Washington: Astronomers have discovered a mysterious little dwarf planet which they believe is covered in ice and may sport the wispy remnants of an atmosphere. The planet, nicknamed “Snow White”, lies outside Neptune and is orbiting the Sun as part of the Kuiper belt — the ring of icy bodies …
Singapore: A cyclical drop in the sun’s radiation can trigger unusually cold winters in parts of North America and Europe, scientists say, a finding that could improve long-range forecasts and help countries prepare for blizzards. Scientists have known for a long time that the sun has an 11-year cycle during …
A study using the Herschel space telescope aimed to measure the fraction of deuterium, a rare type of hydrogen, present in the comet’s water. Like our oceans, it had half the amount of deuterium seen from other comets. The result, published in Nature, hints at the idea that much of …
Three U.S.-born researchers shared the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics for discovering that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate, a startling result that overturned prevailing theories and sparked new questions for cosmology. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded half the prize of 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) …
Scientists have discovered that the upper atmosphere of Mars contains up to a hundred times more water than previously thought, a finding they say could change our understanding of the Martian climate. The discovery, published in the journal Science, also suggested that the Red Planet might have contained lot more …
After the six-tonne UARS satellite of Nasa that crashed into the Pacific ocean over a week ago, another is approaching fast for a fiery death plunge soon. This time, it's a defunct German space telescope called ROSAT, which is set to hit the planet at the end of October or …
China launched an experimental module to lay the groundwork for a future space station Thursday, underscoring its ambitions to become a major space power. The box car-sized Tiangong-1 module was shot into space from the Jiuquan launch center on the edge of the Gobi Desert aboard a Long March 2FT1 …
China is due to take its first step towards building a space station on Thursday (today) when it launches an experimental module ahead of the country’s National Day celebrations. The Asian nation sees its ambitious space programme as a symbol of its global stature, growing technical expertise, and the Communist …
CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA: A six ton Nasa science satellite crashed to Earth on Saturday, leaving a mystery about where a ton of space debris may have landed. The US space agency said it believes the debris ended up in the Pacific Ocean, but the precise time of the bus-sized satellite's …
A six-and-a-half tonne defunct climate satellite that has been circling the Earth for the past 20 years will make a fiery death plunge this week, NASA officials have warned. According to NASA’s latest projections, the bus-size Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) will likely plummet down to Earth sometime around Friday …
Sometimes the orange sun rises first. Sometimes it is the red one, although they are never far apart in the sky and you can see them moving around each other, casting double shadows across the firmament and periodically crossing right in front of each other. Such is life, if it …
Washington: To soar far away from Earth and even on to Mars, Nasa has dreamed up the world’s most powerful rocket, a behemoth that borrows from the workhorse liquid-fuel rockets that sent Apollo missions into space four decades ago. But with a price tag that some estimate at $35 billion, …
From double sunrise to double sunset the show goes on, always changing. Sometimes the orange sun rises first. Sometimes it is the red one, although they are never far apart in the sky and you can see them moving around each other, casting double shadows across the firmament and periodically …
NASA unveiled plans on Wednesday for a mammoth deep-space rocket to carry astronauts to the moon, Mars and other destinations beyond the International Space Station. The rocket project would cost $10 billion through 2017, when the first test flight of the Space Launch System is scheduled to take place from …
