Reply by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in compliance to the National Green Tribunal (NGT) order dated January 21, 2024 in the matter of ‘News item titled “Feeling anxious? Toxic air could be to blame” appearing in Times of India dated 10.10.2023’. NGT had directed CPCB to file a …
ON OCTOBFR 16, 1994, musicians in Paris, Bombay, Jakarta and Singapore played the tune, We are the world, in perfect unison, while people in the 4 cities watched them on giant video screens. This was possible thanks to the world's longest optical fibre submarine communication cable that was inaugurated in …
ON OCTOBER 15 this year, India finally joined the power pantheon in outer space: the successful launch of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-D2) from Sriharikota on India's eastern coast placed in a polar sun-synchronous orbit a 870-kg remote sensing satellite, the IRS-P2. According to K Kasturirangan, chairperson of the …
WITH the successful flight of the polar satellite launch vehicle (PSLV-D2), India has gained a foothold in an exclusive international space club. But sobering the optimism expressed after the successful launch of the 870 kg IRS-P2 satellite is the fact that Indian space scientists have a long way to go …
Under a project expected to commence later this year, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) will utilise a permanent satellite facility for beaming programmes and lectures to students throughout the country. This project, which follows a successful experiment conducted in October 1993 by the Staff Training and Research Institute …
THE bright side of moon may move many a heart to romantic verse, but for scientists, it is the faint glow on the dark portion of the crescent moon that matters. The glow is a reflection of sunlight bounced off the Earth by clouds, snow and dust hazes. The reflection, …
SO FAR, a great deal of US space exploration has been the hegemony of massive spacecraft such as those used in the Apollo moon exploration programme, the Voyager flybys of the outer planets and the latest Galileo and Cassini missions. However, a severe resource crunch is compelling the National Aeronautics …
Greece will use satellites to tackle its illegal housing problem. Under the plan, satellites will scan the country's terrain weekly to take pictures of illegal dwellings. Officials propose to focus on forests and coastal areas, which are favoured by illegal builders. With more than 1 million illegal buildings already constructed, …
A celestial battle is brewing over the Indian sky. The lollipop of 150 million viewers in the country -- expected to double over the next 2 decades -- has international broadcasting firms scrambling to place satellites over the subcontinent. Everybody, from Doordarshan to Star, has plans to dominate the battle …
COME mid-July and the moon could bloody well disintegrate and not attract more than passing attention: the world's major telescopes will be focused devotedly on an unique celestial spectacle -- 31-odd pieces of a giant broken-up comet smashing into the dark side of Jupiter. The crash, which will heave into …
The Department of Space (DoS) will sell Indian Remote-sensing Satellite (IRS) data to the US-based Earth Operation Satellite Company (EOSAT), jointly owned by the Martin Marietta Company and Hughes Aerospace. This data will then by distributed by EOSAT to several user agencies within the US. Following an agreement between DoS …
A UNIQUE radar that will help atmospheric scientists and also ensure safe rocket launchings from Sriharikota, has been commissioned at Gadanki near Tirupati. The radar will allow detailed studies of the lower and middle atmosphere and the ionosphere region above 100 km. Called the mesosphere-stratosphere-troposphere (MST) radar, the Rs 10 …
THE Big Bang theory postulates that a uniform mix of radiation and particles pervaded space immediately after the explosion of dense matter. As the matter cooled, defects appeared in this uniform mix that, cosmologists speculate, led to the formation of galaxies. In 1976, theoretical physicist Thomas Kibble of Imperial College …
IN JANUARY, after a break of 22 years, the US once again turned its attention to the moon. This time, however, it was not NASA that launched a spacecraft, but the Ballistic Missile Defence Organization (BMDO), the successor to the Strategic Defence Initiative Organization. The spacecraft, christened Clementine, was originally …
Indian fisherfolk will soon be aided by an indigenously developed satellite that will direct them to fertile fishing spots. The Rs 70 crore Oceansat satellite, being designed by scientists of the Indian Space Research Organisation, will enhance the costly facilities currently provided by two US satellites. "Oceansat will not only …
NORMAL life came to a grinding halt in Canada when a geomagnetic disturbance hit two of its communications satellites -- Anik E1 and Anik E2. Television and radio transmissions were disrupted across the nation. Canadian Press, the country's biggest news service that feeds information to more than 100 newspapers and …
India's postal department is going high-tech. In March-April, it will launch pilot projects in Delhi, Madras, Bangalore, Lucknow and Patna to transmit money orders by satellite. Miniature earth stations called Very Small Aperture Terminals will be installed in post offices and linked to a business message network of the department …
THE TITLE reminds you of the Edwardian English poet, Walter De La Mare's The Listeners: "'Is there anybody there,' said the traveller?" While De La Mare's traveller rode through time seeking responses, Drake's creatures hover through space. Earth has possibly never been visited by an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) that …
• Nicolas Hayek, chairperson of SMH AG, is looking for a partner to introduce the automotive equivalent of the Swatch watch he made famous in the 1980s. Hayek's inexpensive, stylish and "environmentally correct" car is to have low pollution levels, thanks to a hybrid system of battery- and gasoline-powered motors. …
AS RUSSIA moves to a market economy, some celebrated but impecunious cosmonauts are cashing in on their space legacies. Alexei Leonov, the first man to walk in space, pocketed $255,500 as he watched his training space suit go under Sotheby's hammer in New York in December (Nature, Vol 366, No …
SEVEN astronauts returned to earth on December 13, 1993, after completing an unusual job: Rectifying a defective mirror on the Hubble space telescope. The $1.6-billion telescope was launched in 1990 with a defective mirror that prevented it from focussing on remote objects of the universe. The astronauts installed 11 new …
