Science

A US government watchdog on Friday sided with NASA over its decision to pick a single lunar lander provider, rejecting a protest filed by Blue Origin and defense contractor Dynetics Inc. The companies had challenged the $2.9 billion award to Elon Musk’s SpaceX for the lander, arguing NASA was required to make multiple awards. The Government

Researchers have now been able to see light being ejected from behind a supermassive black hole, 800 million light-years away from Earth. These light waves — called “echoes” — were detected in the form of X-rays, according to a study published in the Nature journal. Over a century ago, Albert Einstein predicted through his Theory

A team of researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has discovered that obese mice, treated with the cytokine (a category of proteins) known as TSLP, reported significant fat and weight loss. Described as an “unforeseen finding,” researchers also said that the fat loss was in no way related to

The International Space Station (ISS) was thrown briefly out of control on Thursday when jet thrusters of a newly arrived Russian research module inadvertently fired a few hours after it was docked to the orbiting outpost, NASA officials said. The seven crew members aboard – two Russian cosmonauts, three NASA astronauts, a Japanese astronaut, and

The 2020 Summer Olympics is currently underway in Tokyo, Japan, and NASA has posted a stunning night view of Tokyo city on Instagram, taken from the International Space Station (ISS). The picture shows the city in all its glory as the games unfolded. In its post, NASA wrote, “The Olympic games light up the night”,

Astronomers have found the first evidence of water vapour in the atmosphere of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System. They believe Ganymede may hold more water than all of Earth’s oceans. But finding water in liquid form there is difficult. The temperatures are so cold that all the water on the

Fresh off his trip to space, billionaire businessman Jeff Bezos on Monday offered to cover up to $2 billion in NASA costs if the US space agency awards his company Blue Origin a contract to make a spacecraft designed to land astronauts back on the moon. NASA in April awarded rival billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s

Former chief executive officer of Virgin Galactic Holdings, George Whitesides, will fly to space on the aerospace company’s next test spaceflight, CNBC reported on Friday. Richard Branson, the billionaire founder of Virgin Galactic, flew to space earlier this month, beating Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos to the final frontier. Branson announced the news about Whitesides during a

Fewer fields have witnessed advancements on the same scale as robotics. There have been many inspirations — from dogs to humans — for scientists and engineers to design a robot. We have seen these machines walk beside their owners, perform acrobatics, and even assist humans in identifying and lifting work in warehouses. That the robots

Elon Musk’s private rocket company SpaceX was awarded a $178 million (roughly Rs. 1,324.80 crores) launch services contract for NASA’s first mission focusing on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa and whether it may host conditions suitable for life, the space agency said on Friday. The Europa Clipper mission is due for blastoff in October 2024 on

The Dutch teenager who became the world’s youngest space traveller this week surprised billionaire Jeff Bezos on the flight by telling him he’d never ordered anything on Amazon.com. Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old physics student, accompanied Bezos, his brother Mark Bezos and 82-year-old female aviator Wally Funk – the oldest person to go to space –

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter is all set to make its tenth flight on Mars and officials said that it could happen on July 24. Ingenuity, which arrived on the Red Planet aboard the Mars Perseverance rover on February 18, is the first to have flown on a terrestrial planet other than Earth. The space agency said

DeepMind, an artificial intelligence (AI) subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet, said it has been successful in predicting the shape of nearly every protein in the human body as well as thousands of other proteins found in 20 additional organisms that scientists rely on for their research, including yeast, fruit flies, and mice. This breakthrough is

Every single time NASA shares a picture of space on Twitter or Instagram and explains what it is about, many in the comments section ask how these photographs were taken, whether the colours are real, and, most importantly, they enquire about the cameras that the Hubble Telescope is equipped with. The space agency, in its

NASA has shared a stunning photograph on Instagram of a galaxy called M77, and has offered a brief explanation of how it has been “shaped.” For a long time, the shapes of many galaxies, including our own Milky Way, have puzzled many scientists. The Milky Way is spiral-shaped and has arms full of stars. However,