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Showing posts with the label Space

India's space ambitions is soaring

GSLV Mark-3 ( Image credits- ISRO) Indian space program is making huge strides in International stage. But still, it is only the tip of the ice berg. India can achieve more. The Diplomat in an in depth article looks at the issue in detail ( The article can be read here .....)

Is there life on Mars? Russia and Europe to look ( Source- Russia & India Report / Author- SVETLANA ARKHANGELSKAYA, RIR)

Russian Proton-M rocket  ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons/ Flickr) Source- Russia & India Report Authors- SVETLANA ARKHANGELSKAYA, RIR A Proton-M rocket with Russian and European instruments on board lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakstan at 12:31 p.m. on March 14. The primary aim of the mission is to find methane on the Mars, the red planet. Methane is often an indicator of primitive biological life. The rocket will also attempt to develop technologies for a soft landing amid dust storms. The launch date was not selected at random. March 2016 is when Mars and the Earth are at their closest, around 55 million kilometres from each other, as opposed to the normal average distance of 225 million kilometres. "This period is a 'window' of sorts,'' said Dr. Igor Mitrofanov, director of the department of nuclear planetology at the Institute of Space Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences. “This occurs once every two years a

Locating Turkey Within Outer Space Politics – Analysis ( Source- Eurasia Review / Authors- Can Özcan and Xavier Quintana/ JTW)

Image credits-  Wikimedia Commons / NASA Source- Eurasia Review Author- Can Özcan and Xavier Quintana/ JTW In 2001, the Turkish National Security Council approved a decision titled ‘Establishing a Turkish Space Agency’, and a draft law will be submitted to the Turkish Parliament in the second half of 2016. What accounts for Turkey’s late entry to develop a major space program along with the independent capability to access space? Is Turkey on a path to address this shortcoming? If not, why? The politics of outer space involve planetary defense, asteroid mining, telecommunications, satellite projects, and the observation of Earth. The US-led Global Positioning System (GPS) is an integral part of space technology, whose function ranges from military survey and construction to farming, finance, and air traffic management. Russia, Japan and China are reluctant to be part of this system, and instead have followed their independent paths through the Glonass, Quasi-Zenith

NASA Studies High Clouds, Saharan Dust From EPIC View ( Source- Eurasia Review)

Image credits- NASA Source- Eurasia Review From a dusty atmosphere stretching across the Atlantic Ocean to daily views of clouds at sunrise, a new NASA camera keeping a steady eye on the sunlit side of Earth is yielding new insights about our changing planet. With NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), affixed to NOAA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) about one million miles from Earth, scientists are getting a new view of our planet’s clouds, land surfaces, aerosols and more. Science results from the first EPIC images were discussed Monday at a media briefing at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. EPIC captures a color image of the sunlit side of Earth at least once every two hours, allowing researchers to track features as the planet rotates in the instrument’s field of view. “With EPIC, you see cloud structure from sunrise on the left to sunset on the right,” said Jay Herman, EPIC instrument lead investigator at NASA’s Go

Dark Matter Dominates In Nearby Dwarf Galaxy ( Source- Eurasia Review)

Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / ESO Source- Eurasia Review Dark matter is called “dark” for a good reason. Although they outnumber particles of regular matter by more than a factor of 10, particles of dark matter are elusive. Their existence is inferred by their gravitational influence in galaxies, but no one has ever directly observed signals from dark matter. Now, by measuring the mass of a nearby dwarf galaxy called Triangulum II, Assistant Professor of Astronomy Evan Kirby may have found the highest concentration of dark matter in any known galaxy. Triangulum II is a small, faint galaxy at the edge of the Milky Way, made up of only about 1,000 stars. Kirby measured the mass of Triangulum II by examining the velocity of six stars whipping around the galaxy’s center. “The galaxy is challenging to look at,” he said. “Only six of its stars were luminous enough to see with the Keck telescope.” By measuring these stars’ velocity, Kirby could infer the gravitational f

Defining And Regulating The Weaponization Of Space – Analysis ( Source- Eurasia Review / Author- David C. DeFrieze)

Image source- Wikimedia Commons / Credits- NASA Source- Eurasia Review Author- David C. DeFrieze Space is a contested, congested, and competitive domain. Each year the international community relies ever more on space-based technology for defense, civil, and commercial purposes. Accordingly, the weaponization of space has increasingly become an issue of concern. Space is an international common and is thus easier to protect through international cooperation. Since the beginnings of humanity’s venture into space, the international community has made attempts to define and regulate the placement and use of weapons there, but with only limited success. This article discusses the international interest in controlling the weaponization of space and prior attempts to define and regulate it.1 It then offers an approach to better achieve the international cooperation needed to meet global concerns over space weapons. Increasing Reliance on Space The international comm

China Leads Race to the Moon ( Source- The Diplomat, Author- Jan Mortier & Benjamin Finnis)

Long March Rocket ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / Attributes- Author ) Source- The Diplomat Author- Jan Mortier & Benjamin Finnis In October 2014, China’s Chang’e 5-T1 lunar probe, known as Xiaofei or Little Flyer, successfully completed an orbit around the Moon. This was the first time that a trip around the Moon and back of this sort had been made since the USA and Russian trips in the 1970s. The Little flyer is a precursor to Chang’e 5 which will bring back lunar soil (regolith) containing the nuclear fuel helium-3 that can be used for baseload energy production and the next generation of nuclear weapons. The Little Flyer mission lasted eight days and its primary objective was to conduct atmospheric re-entry tests on the Chang’e 5 capsule design which will be launched by 2017. The destination on the lunar surface for Chang’e 5, like that of the Yutu Jade Rabbit rover, is the Mare Imbrium also known as the Sea of Rains, one of the vast lunar crater seas vi

Space, the Final Frontier Between the Public and Private Sectors ( Source- The National Interest, Author- Paul R. Pillar)

Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares launcher Source- The National Interest Author- Paul R. Pillar Private enterprise that is engaged in transportation to space and the upper atmosphere had two catastrophic failures within the last week: the explosion seconds after liftoff of an Antares rocket launched by Orbital Sciences Corporation under a NASA contract to ferry supplies to the international space station; and the crash, killing one of the test pilots, of a rocket plane that Virgin Galactic hopes to use to give passengers rides through the mesosphere. Accidents can happen to anyone, but the incidents point to some issues regarding the relative roles and performance of the public and private sectors and how those roles are commonly viewed. Two issues in particular. One concerns how a well-founded appreciation for the working of free markets has too often been translated into a crude and unfounded, and ideologically driven, belief that the private sector is inherentl

A Code of Conduct for Space ( Info courtesy The Diplomat)

Since the former Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, more than six thousand satellites have been placed in space. The world has arguably become overly dependent on satellite technologies, for everything from communications and navigation through education to meteorology and military applications. The outer space environment has become increasingly congested, contested and competitive as a result.. http://thediplomat.com/2014/02/a-code-of-conduct-for-space/