SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY AFFAIRS APRIL 2015

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY AFFAIRS APRIL 2015

• Cryogenic engine tested successfully
  In a major milestone, an indigenous cryogenic engine, that will help India put satellites of upto four tonnes in geostationary orbit, was tested successfully at ISRO's propulsion complex at Mahendragiri in Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu.
  
  The powerful version of the cryogenic engine was ground tested at the Liquid Propulsion systems center (LPSC). The test was conducted for 635 seconds and it was successful, Vikram Sarabhai Space Center sources in Thiruvananthapuram said.
  
  A team headed by Director D Karthikesan led the testing. ISRO sources said its chairman A S Kirankumar visited Mahendragiri for this purpose. The successful testing is an important milestone in developing lift launch vehicles GSLV MK-3 for the next generation.
  
• Unique 3D map of the universe created
  Astrophysicists have created a 3D map of the universe that spans nearly two billion light years and is the most complete picture of our cosmic neighbourhood so far. The spherical map of galaxy super clusters will lead to a greater understanding of how matter is distributed in the universe and provide key insights into the mysterious dark matter, the researchers noted.
  
  The galaxy distribution is not uniform and has no pattern. The lighter blue and white areas on the map represent greater concentrations of galaxies. The red area is the supercluster called the "shapley concentration", the largest collection of galaxies in the nearby universe. Unexplored areas appear in medium blue.
  
  Scientists have observed that galaxies move differently because the universe's expansion is not even. These differences are called peculiar velocities. Our own Milky Way galaxy and its neighbour Andromeda are moving with a speed of two million km per hour.
  
• Three super-Earths orbiting nearby star discovered
  Scientists in Washington have discovered three planets, each with a mass 7 to 8 times that of Earth, orbiting a nearby star that is only 54 light-years away. Researchers said that the three planets orbit their star at a distance closer than Mercury, orbits the Sun, completing their orbits in just five, 15, and 24 days. The Automated Planet Finder (APF) Telescope at Lick Observatory in California and W M Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaii traced out the planets' orbits over many years using the Doppler technique that has successfully found hundreds of mostly larger planets orbiting nearby stars.
  
• Tata Power commissions 24 MW wind farm in Gujarat
  Tata Power, India’s largest integrated power company, on 29th April announced the successful commissioning of a 24-megawatt (MW) wind farm at Rojmal in Gujarat, through its subsidiary Tata Power Renewable Energy Ltd (TPREL), increasing its total operational capacity in this segment to 511 MW. The total capacity of this wind power project is 54 MW. Tata Power’s total installed capacity stands at 8,750 MW and the clean and renewable energy capacity at 1,383 MW.
  
  The 24-MW wind capacity is expected to generate nearly 52 million units per year. Tata Power’s wind farms are located across leading wind resource States including Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka.
  
  The company is evaluating growth opportunities in these States, as also in Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, through organic, and inorganic means as it continues to pursue avenues to add clean and renewable energy generation capacities to increase its portfolio, Anil Sardana, MD and CEO, said in a statement here.
  
  TPREL’s Rojmal wind farm utilizes wind turbines from Inox Wind Ltd, and sells the power to Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam LTd (GUVNL) under the Gujarat Wind Policy, 2013. The company also has projects under development in Rajasthan and Maharashtra.
  
  Tata Power has six of its renewable energy projects registered under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) programme of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
  
• Dinosaur fossil discovered in China
  A bat-like dinosaur has been unearthed in China that had wings made of skin rather than feathers, showing there may have been different ways of flying before the emergence of birds.
  
  The tiny dinosaur discovered by a local farmer from Jurassic rocks in northeast China has been named Yi qi, which means "strange wing" in Mandarin. It belongs to a group of dinosaurs with long hands called Scansoriopterygids that thrived 160 million years ago and so far are known only to be from China. Scansoriopterygids are closely related to small, primitive birds such as the Archaeopteryx, but there was previously no evidence that they could take to the air.
  
  The researchers expect their reconstruction of the wings of Yi qi to be controversial, but say their theory is the best interpretation based on the available evidence.
  
  Recent discoveries including dinosaurs with plumage and dinosaur eggs that looked a lot like bird eggs helped settle the centuries-old question over the origins of birds. Most palaeontologists now believe birds evolved some 150 million years ago from a group of dinosaurs known as maniraptoran the ropods - mostly small meat-eating dinosaurs that include Velociraptor.
  
• Largest Photo Voltaic Cell in MP
  The Madhya Pradesh Cabinet gave its approval to build 750 megawatt (MW) solar photovoltaic (SPV) plant at Gurh tehsil in Rewa district. The plant, to be developed in three phases of 250 MW, once completed will become the world’s largest solar power plant. At present, the largest SPV plant is the Topaz Solar Farm (550 MW) in California’s San Luis Obispo county, US, which was commissioned in 2014.
  
• NASA ended operations of MESSENGER Mission to Mercury
  National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on 30 April 2015 ended the operations of MESSENGER Mission. MESSENGER stands for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging. It was launched on 3 August 2004 to study Mercury’s atmosphere. The journey of the spacecraft came to an end with Expected Impact (EI) on Mercury’s surface. It plunged to the Mercury’s surface at around 14000 kmph, creating a crater up to 52 feet wide.
  
• India has 988 species on IUCN ‘Red List’
  India has added 15 more species to the “Red List” of threatened species published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in 2014, but the country has climbed down a spot to the seventh position.
  
  By the year-end, India had 988 threatened species on the list, which lists critically endangered, endangered and vulnerable species. In 2013, the number was 973. With 659 species in 2008, the increase over seven years is 50 per cent, in part due to better research identifying more threatened species and deforestation. By adding 37 species, China seemed to have helped India improve its rank. A recent World Bank mapping of endangered mammals shows India as having the fourth largest number of threatened species in the world, 31 of them endemic to the region.
  
• Invisible dark matter mapped at cosmic scale
  In a first, cosmologists have generated an enormous map of the distribution of dark matter in our universe, tracing the invisible substance by monitoring its gravitational effects on light. The picture maps clumps and voids of dark matter in a patch of sky covering around two million galaxies and showing features hundreds of millions of light years across
  
  The observations fit the standard picture of cosmology strikingly well, as dark matter is thought to be the main driver in the formation of large-scale cosmic structures. Using a 570-megapixel camera at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, the researchers photographed about two million galaxies.
  
• India successfully test-fires nuclear-capable Agni-III missile
  India on 16th April successfully test-fired nuclear-capable ballistic missile Agni-III off Odisha coast. The 3,000 km range indigenously developed surface-to-Surface missile, protected by a carbon all-composite heat shield, blasted off at 9.55 this morning from a mobile launcher at Integrated Test Range in Wheeler Island of Dhamra.
  
  The missile has two stages which are powered by solid propellants and can carry both conventional and nuclear warheads weighing up to 1.5 tonnes and target parts of China. The launch operation was carried out by strategic forces command of the Indian army with logistic support from Defense Research and Development Organization. Agni-III has a length of 17 meters and launch weight of around 48 tonnes. Agni-II has already been inducted in the armed forces since June 2011.
  
• NASA probe captures first color image of Pluto
  NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has sent back its first color image of the dwarf planet Pluto and its largest moon Charon, after more than nine years of traveling through the solar system.
  
  The new photo, taken on April 9 from a distance of about 115 million kilometers, is already providing insights about Pluto and Charon, as well as suggestions of the science to come when New Horizons flies by the Pluto system on July 14, NASA said.
  
• SpaceX cargo ship reaches ISS
  SpaceX’s unmanned Dragon cargo ship arrived on 17th April at the International Space Station. European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti grappled the capsule with the space station’s robotic arm at 6:55 am local time as the space station flew to the east of Japan, NASA said. Its contents include an espresso machine, ready-made food packets, and a host of science experiments.
  
• Moon formed 4.47 billion years ago, says study
  The cataclysmic collision between Earth and a Mars-size object that forged the Moon may have occurred about 4.47 billion years ago, suggests a study of meteorites with ancient fragments from that cosmic impact. This finding suggests that, one day, it may be possible to find samples of what the primordial Earth was like before the giant impact that formed the moon, or to uncover bits of the impacting rock itself.
  
  Earth was born about 4.5 billion years ago, and scientists think the moon formed shortly afterward. The leading explanation for the moon's origin, known as the giant impact hypothesis, suggests that the moon resulted from the collision of two protoplanets, or embryonic worlds. One of those was the young Earth, and the other was a potentially Mars-size object called Theia. The moon then coalesced from the rubble.
  
• NFC achieves highest nuclear fuel production
  The Hyderabad based Nuclear Fuel Complex (NFC) has achieved its highest ever production of nuclear fuel of 1252 Metric Tonnes during the year 2014-15. It is an all time record to register a quantum jump of 300 MTs that is 47% higher than that of previous year. Automation of production processes has yielded good results. All the three Zirconium, Fuel and Assembling plants have surpassed their rated capacities. NFC will supply fuel for 1600-1700 MW nuclear-power in next five years.
  
• India test-fires Dhanush missile
  India successfully test-fired nuclear weapons-capable Dhanush missile from a ship, off the Odisha coast on 9th April.
  
  The ship-based missile was launched by personnel of the Strategic Forces Command (SFC) from an Offshore Patrolling Vessel (OPV), which was deep inside the sea, for its full range of 350 km, according to Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) missile scientists. Dhanush, a maneuvering missile is a naval variant of Prithvi-II, and can carry a nuclear payload of 500 kg.
  
• Anesthetic Gases Contribute to Climate Change, Say Atmospheric Chemists
  The concentrations of modern inhalation anesthetics like Desflurane, Isoflurane and Sevoflurane in the global atmosphere is growing rapidly and the concentrations of these gases have been detected as far as Antarctica. This was revealed by a study titled Modern Inhalation Anesthetics: Potent greenhouse gases in the global atmosphere published on 13 March 2015 in the online journal Geophysical Research Letters.
  
• Russia says it could cut its greenhouse-gas emissions by 30%
  Russia, moving ahead of a deadline for submitting pledges to tackle climate change has said it could cut its greenhouse-gas emissions by up to 30 per cent compared to 1990 levels, subject to conditions.
  
  In a roster of commitments on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change website, Russia on 31st March announced that limiting man-made greenhouse gases in Russia to 70-75 per cent of 1990 levels by the year 2030 might be a long-term indicator.
  
  March 31 was a rough deadline for the 195 countries in the UNFCCC process to submit the intended nationally determined contributions. The intended pact to tackle greenhouse gases would be sealed in Paris this December and take effect from 2020.
  
• Rare spiders discovered
  Researchers at the Division of Arachnology, Koch have recorded the sighting of a huntsman and jumping spider in the Western Ghats. The spiders belong to the Sparassidae and Salticidae families. The research team included Dr. Mathew M.J., Fr. Jobi Malamel and Pradeep Kumar M.S. and were led by Dr. P.A. Sebastian, director of the Division of Arachnology.
  
  The huntsman spider was sighted at Ponmudi, while the researchers found the jumping spider at the Malayattoor and Bhoothathankettu reserve forest
  
  It has been given the name Stenaelurillus albus owing to the presence of a unique whitish area on the copulatory organ of the male spider. The discovery is unique as it has the presence of mating plugs that have been reported in only 17 species of the approximate 5,800 jumping spiders recorded till now.
  
• Minor planet named after Vishwanathan Anand
  India’s first chess grandmaster, Vishwanathan Anand has been granted the honor of having a minor planet named after him. With this privilege, Anand joins former world chess champions Alexander Alekhine and Anatoly Karpov who have had a similar honour bestowed on them.
  
  The minor planet, now known as Vishyanand, was previously identified as planet 4538 and is located somewhere between the planets of Mars and Jupiter.
  
  It so happened that recently, Michael Rudenko of International Astronomical Union was invited to suggest a name for this minor planet. Michael Rudenko, a chess buff recommended Vishwanathan Anand's name which the committee readily approved.
  
  Minor planet 4538 Vishyanand was discovered by Kenzo Suzuki in Toyota, Aichi Prefecture, Japan, on 10 October 1988 but remained unnamed for almost 10 years, until now.
  
  A minor planet is an astronomical object in direct orbit around the Sun that is neither a dominant planet nor a comet, and thus includes the dwarf planets. The orbital categories of minor planets are the asteroids, trojans, centaurs, Kuiper belt objects, and other trans-Neptunian objects.
  
  The first minor planet discovered was Ceres in 1801. The orbits of more than 540,000 objects have been archived at the Minor Planet Center. The term “minor planet” has been used since the 19th century to describe these objects.