| Ever since the Wright Brothers managed to get their Wright flyer airborne in 1903, the history of aviation has been dotted with a number of fascinating, landmark moments. This list will run through 14 of the most innovative, important and incredible airplanes ever to grace the skies, and tell the remarkable stories that made them such trailblazing groundbreakers. | ||||||||||||||||||
| 1. Wright Flyer
The first plane to successfully take flight
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Aviation
This Made-In-India Chip Can Use TV Spectrum to Take the Internet to Rural India….
An Indian organization has come up with a technology that can help increase internet connectivity and take it to the rural parts of the nation as well.
A postal stamp-sized chip, called Pruthvi might have the potential to connect India’s rural population to the internet.
Developed by the Bangalore-based semiconductor firm, Saankhya Labs, the chip powers a system called Meghdoot that can use television White Space to transmit internet to many households.
Picture for representation only. Photo Credit: Matt Laskowski/Flickr
White Space refers to the underutilised portion of the radio frequency spectrum. According a report in CNET, networks often leave a buffer between channels for safety purposes. Thus, large portions of the spectrum, usually in the 470 MHz to 790 MHz band, allocated for television broadcasting are unused or wasted, like the spectrum traditionally used for over-the-air transmission using TV towers and rooftop antennas. These spaces are at a lower frequency, and therefore a longer wavelength. This gives the signal a longer range, which can be used to deliver fairly low-speed Internet access over a wide area.
Saankhya Labs was founded in 2007 by Parag Naik, Hemant Mallapur and Vishwakumara Kayargadde. Pruthvi’s use is to allow Meghdoot to connect to a user-side modem to translate the white space signals to the more common internet bands that smartphones, tablets and computers use.
This technology can provide internet for up to a radius of 10-15 km depending on the height of the antenna tower and transmission power. The range can also be increased.
Saankhya labs is set to carry out field trials across the country in collaboration with IIT-Bombay, IIT-Delhi and IIT-Hyderabad. Discussions with Microsoft are also going on with the view of conducting trials in at Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh.
“World over regulatory authorities are using or planning to use this spectrum for their respective connectivity programmes. India can take the lead in both technology and the markets for TV White Space-based broadband delivery,” Parag Naik, CEO and co-founder of Saankhya Labs, told The Economic Times.
The chip is crucial in today’s times when the country is taking various measures to increase the impact of digital India, and also when various technology companies are working on similar goals. Saankhya Labs has now joined the likes of Google, Facebook and Microsoft.
The Meghdoot product line is also compliant to the Wi-FAR standard. This makes it suitable for use in other countries as well. The organization is also engaged with partners in the Philippines, the US and Singapore for trials.
Source….Tanaya Singh …www.thebetterindia.com
Natarajan
Visual delights take flight…
The latest installations in the arrival and departure halls add to the ever-growing list of artwork in Chennai’s international and domestic terminals
Flight delayed by a few hours? It won’t be as much a waste of time, if you considered taking a mini art tour across Chennai Airport. Over the course of the last couple of years, ever since the new airport was opened in 2013, 37 murals and four sculptures have been installed in both the domestic and international terminals — the most recent ones being those of a Nataraja in Thandavam pose and Yudhisthira’s ratha.
“We were asked to make two sculptures that are reminiscent of Tamil Nadu culture, by the Airport Chairman (R. K. Srivastava), for the Global Investors Meet, which took place in September. So, after a lot of brainstorming, we thought, why not bring out Nataraja and Yudhisthira’s ratha, which people can immediately associate with the heritage here,” says Neelam Dhanda, co-owner of the 12-year-old Sunny Sistems — The Art Gallery, which has executed all the installations at the airport.
The two installations were set up just a few days ahead of the investors meet, on August 30. “The 12-and-a-half-foot-high Nataraja is visible from everywhere in the arrival hall. It’s made of fibre, and has been made to look as if it has been made out of wood, and coloured in the way wooden sculptures are coloured traditionally,” says Uday Dhanda, son of Neelam, who coordinated with 18 artisans to create the works in 55 days.
Yudhisthira’s ratha, one of the five rathas which can be seen in Mahabalipuram, has Arjuna’s Penance (a stone carving at Mahabalipuram) etched on three sides, and the guardians of heaven, or dwarpals, on the back. Placed at the departure section, the 16-foot-high installation, which looks like a slice out of the Shore Temple, is also lit up with 102 lights. “I wouldn’t be surprised if a few people took snaps in front of it and told their friends that they actually visited the site at Mahabalipuram. It is that real,” Uday says with a laugh.
The challenge for the team was to bring out an imposing installation that stands out in the busy venue, but at the same time doesn’t eat into the space that sees thousands of people per day. “So, we had to take care that we consumed only a limited footprint. At first glance, people should be able to connect with it; that was our intention,” says Neelam. “Not everyone is going to take the effort or have the time to visit a gallery or tourist spots here, so the installations are a reflection of what the city has in store for them,” she adds.
The previous installations done by the team include those that depict Tamil festivals, dances and processions, besides those of a horse that’s been hand-made with brass and copper sheets and of a boat that depicts the city’s dependence on the ocean. As far as the International Terminal is concerned, there are swans, peacocks, horses and a separate series on the Indian dance forms.
Keywords: Chennai airport, art installations, Chennai art
Source….
- NAVEENA VIJAYAN ….www.thehindu.com
Natarajan
Daily Views of Earth on NASA Website….
Earth rotates through an entire day as captured in this animation of 22 still images taken on Sept. 17, 2015 by NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) camera on the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) spacecraft.
Credits: NASA
NASA launched a new website Monday so the world can see images of the full, sunlit side of the Earth every day. The images are taken by a NASA camera one million miles away on the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), a partnership between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Air Force.
Once a day NASA will post at least a dozen new color images of Earth acquired from 12 to 36 hours earlier by NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC). Each daily sequence of images will show the Earth as it rotates, thus revealing the whole globe over the course of a day. The new website also features an archive of EPIC images searchable by date and continent.
The primary objective of NOAA’s DSCOVR mission is to maintain the nation’s real-time solar wind monitoring capabilities, which are critical to the accuracy and lead time of space weather alerts and forecasts from NOAA. NASA has two Earth-observing instruments on the spacecraft. EPIC’s images of Earth allow scientists to study daily variations over the entire globe in such features as vegetation, ozone, aerosols, and cloud height and reflectivity.
EPIC is a four megapixel CCD camera and telescope. The color Earth images are created by combining three separate single-color images to create a photographic-quality image equivalent to a 12-megapixel camera. The camera takes a series of 10 images using different narrowband filters — from ultraviolet to near infrared — to produce a variety of science products. The red, green and blue channel images are used to create the color images. Each image is about 3 megabytes in size.
“The effective resolution of the DSCOVR EPIC camera is somewhere between 6.2 and 9.4 miles (10 and 15 kilometers),” said Adam Szabo, DSCOVR project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland.
Since Earth is extremely bright in the darkness of space, EPIC has to take very short exposure images (20-100 milliseconds). The much fainter stars are not visible in the background as a result of the short exposure times.
The DSCOVR spacecraft orbits around the L1 Lagrange point directly between Earth and the sun. This orbit keeps the spacecraft near the L1 point and requires only occasional small maneuvers, but its orbit can vary from 4 to 15 degrees away from the sun-Earth line over several years.
EPIC was built by Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Center, in Palo Alto, California. Using an 11.8-inch (30-centimeter) telescope and 2048 x 2048 CCD detector, EPIC measures in the ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared areas of the spectrum. The data from all 10 wavelengths are posted through a website hosted by the Atmospheric Science Data Center at NASA’s Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia. All images are in the public domain.
NASA uses the vantage point of space to increase our understanding of our home planet, improve lives, and safeguard our future. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth’s interconnected natural systems with long-term data records. The agency freely shares this unique knowledge and works with institutions around the world to gain new insights into how our planet is changing.
For daily images from EPIC, visit:
For more information about the DSCOVR mission, visit:
http://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/DSCOVR/
Source……www.nasa.gov
Image of the Day…” Sunset and Windmill”…
Sunset and windmill
A slightly squashed pumpkin sunset in Montana …
John Ashley submitted this photo to EarthSky, of a beautiful sunset captured on October 16, 2015. He wrote:
Even a seasoned windmill stopped to watch tonight’s pumpkin sun setting through layered clouds near Malta, Montana.
Source….www.earthsky.org
Natarajan
Image of the Day… Earth Art From Australia as seen from International Space Station
On Oct. 12-13, 2015, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly took a series of seventeen photographs from the International Space Station during a single flyover of Australia. This first photo of the series was posted with the caption, “#EarthArt in one pass over the #Australian continent. Picture 1 of 17. #YearInSpace”.
Image Credit: NASA
Source…..www.nasa.gov
These are the songs that make astronaut Scott Kelly feel less alone while travelling through space
Scott Kelly recently broke the record for most time spent in space by a US astronaut, logging his 383rd day aboard the International Space Station. He’s also on pace to break another record on October 29th, when he spends his 216th consecutive day orbiting the earth — the most in a row.
For many people, this seems like a dream. The idea of floating up in space, where so few people in the history of the world have ever been, is intoxicating. But it can, of course, get intensely lonely, Kelly says.
“A year really is a long time…a long time to never be able to go outside, or feel the sun on your face, or to see your family through anything besides a computer screen,” he muses.
And one of the ways he stays connected to the world below is through music.
“When living in a place isolated from the rest of the world like here aboard the International Space Station, [music] becomes more significant,” he tells Spotify.
Kelly has created a playlist that reflects his space journey so far. It spans many genres, but there is a contemplative wistfulness that runs through it. It’s not hard to imagine listening to these songs as you stare across the void back at your home planet.
And to be honest, it’s a bit dorky — the kind of earnest emotion unconcerned with looking cool.
Here are the tracks, which Kelly suggests you listen to in order:
- Stay — Jasmine Thompson
- Lose Yourself — Eminem
- Feel This Moment — Pitbull and Christina Aguilera
- Speed of Sound — Coldplay
- These Are Days — 10,000 Maniacs
- Hazy Shade of Winter — The Bangles
- Chasing Cars — Snow Patrol
- Fire And Rain — James Taylor
- Imagine — John Lennon
- Lights — Ellie Goulding
- Black — Pearl Jam
- Dark Horse — Katy Perry and Juicy J
- In Your Eyes — Peter Gabriel
- Just Like Heaven — The Cure
- Wish You Were Here — Pink Floyd
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- Leader of The Band — Dan Fogelberg
- Babylon — David Grey
- Hotel California — Eagles
- Adagio for Strings — Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, and the New York Philharmonic
- The Promise — Michael Nyman
- Sunrise — Norah Jones
- A Thousand Years — Christina Perri
- Landslide — Fleetwood Mac
- Wide Open Spaces — Dixie Chicks
- Time To Say Goodbye (Con Te Partiro) — Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli
- Brand New Day — Sting
- Kryptonite — 3 Doors Down
- Thunder Road — Bruce Springsteen
Source…..www.businessinsider.com
Natarajan
This Flight Costs Just Rs. 60 and Goes Nowhere….!!!
Never been on an airplane? Here’s your chance to board one for as little as Rs 60, or even for nothing if you don’t have the money. Retired aircraft engineer Bahadur Chand Gupta will be happy to show you around.
“I am in an aeroplane for the first time. I saw many things inside,” exclaimed an excited Jatin when he boarded the flight to nowhere.
He is one of many underprivileged kids who may never get a chance to fly on an actual plane. But he climbed the long stairway that took him to an orange and white aircraft set up on a patch of land on the outskirts of Delhi.
The plane, of course, is going nowhere. But it is giving an opportunity to people from some of the poorest neighbourhoods in the city to experience what it is like to sit on the jets they see fly above them in the sky.
When a retired aircraft engineer Bahadur Chand Gupta, who comes from the small village of Kasana in Haryana, started his career many years ago, the villagers curiously asked him what it was like to be in an aircraft. None of them had ever seen a real airplane and they wanted to get a glimpse of life in the aviation industry through Gupta’s eyes. –
For security reasons, Gupta was never able to take his fellow villagers inside an actual aircraft. But he always wanted to do something that would give them a taste of flying.
Finally, in 2003, Gupta sold some land and bought an old Airbus A300. He parked it on a vacant lot close the city’s domestic airport and started offering virtual ‘flights’ to the general public.
To make the experience close to real, the ‘passengers’ in his ‘flight’ are given boarding passes, shown safety instructions, and even offered in-flight snacks. Some even get to see the cockpit.
The passengers pay as little as Rs. 60 to board this flight and some can even get to be part of it for free (depending upon their financial condition). What adds to the amazing in-flight experience is the unique evacuation practice where the kids slide out of the the aircraft instead of taking the regular stairs.
Source….Shreya Pareek….www.the betterindia.com
Natarajan
Scott Kelly Becomes U.S. Astronaut to Spend the Most Time in Space…
Just before the 15th anniversary of continuous human presence on the International Space Station on Nov. 2, 2015, U.S. astronaut and commander of the current Expedition 45 crew, Scott Kelly, is breaking spaceflight records. On Friday, Oct. 16, Kelly begins his 383rd day living in space, surpassing U.S. astronaut Mike Fincke’s record of 382 cumulative days. Kelly will break another record Oct. 29 on his 216th consecutive day in space, when he will surpass astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria’s record for the single-longest spaceflight by an American. Lopez-Alegria spent 215 days in space as commander of the Expedition 14 crew in 2006.
In this July 12 photograph, Kelly is seen inside the Cupola, a special module which provides a 360-degree viewing of the Earth and the space station. On each additional day he spends in orbit as part of his one-year mission, Kelly will add to his record and to our understanding of the effects of long-duration spaceflight.
Kelly is scheduled to return to Earth on March 3, 2016, by which time he will have compiled 522 total days living in space during four missions.
Image Credit: NASA
Source….www.nasa.gov
Natarajan
Singapore Airlines joins Qantas with launch of a 19-hour flight: Non-stop route to New York set to open in 2018 ….
In-flight entertainment systems will need to be top quality in the future as ultra-long non-stop routes are becoming all the rage.
Qantas announced a non-stop 19-hour flight between Australia and the UK within two years – and now Singapore Airlines is set to launch a non-stop journey that’s the same, gruelling length.
In a statement this week Singapore Airlines announced that it would resume offering 19-hour flights from Singapore to New York in 2018.
The carrier previously operated the long haul route until 2013.
Singapore Airlines says that due to demand the service will resume with the help of a brand new aircraft.
The plane in question will be Airbus’ new ‘ultra-long range’ version of its A350-900, of which Singapore Airlines will be the launch customer.
The high-tech newly converted planes will have the capability of flying up to 19 hours using the increased fuel capacity of its system from 141,000 litres to 165,000 litres.
Our customers have been asking us to re-start non-stop Singapore-US flights and we are pleased that Airbus was able to offer the right aircraft to do so in a commercially viable manner,’ said Singapore Airlines CEO Goh Choon Phong.
The airline has placed an order for 67 of the Airbus A350s, and as more of the efficient planes are added to the fleet, the plan is to resume the 19-hour Singapore-LA route in the near future as well.
At the moment, fliers wishing to make the 8,700-nautical-mile journey to the Big Apple from Singapore have to face the delights of a 22-hour journey, with at least one connection.
LA-bound passengers have a slightly shorter ordeal, with the trip currently taking around 17 hours or more, also with a stop.
Battle is on: Qantas also plans to offer 19-hour flights – from Perth to London
The news comes after Qantas revealed plans to offer a non-stop 19-hour flight between Australia and the UK within two years.
If it does launch before Singapore Airlines’ 19-hour route it will briefly give Qantas the crown of operating the world’s longest non-stop commercial flight.
The airline’s chief executive Alan Joyce said they aim to fly between Perth and London using its new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner by 2017.
‘This opens up direct service from Australia to Europe for the first time,’ he said.
The potential flight path would need two pairs of pilots, extra cabin crew and a proper rest area for airline staff.
Qantas has already ordered eight Boeing 787-9 planes to replace its 747 fleet.
The new aircraft will have roughly 250 seats and include business class, premium economy and economy.
Qantas already operates the current longest route in the world, from Sydney to Dallas-Fort Worth.
Source…..www.dailymail.co.uk
Natarajan
Take off with Natarajan 