Aviation

India”s NIRBHAY Subsonic Cruise Missile… Few Facts on its Launch …

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Nirbhay, India’s first home-grown subsonic cruise missile, was on Friday successfully test-launched from the Interim Test Range in Chandipur, near Balasore in Orissa.

This is Nirbhay’s second launch, the first being terminated mid-way on 12 March 2013 owing to a technical snag. Nirbhay, with an expected strike range of 800-1000 km, is the first missile being made completely in Bangalore.

Here are some facts of the missile:

1) Nirbhay is a subsonic cruise missile – it starts off as a rocket and then turns into an aircraft.

2) Nirbhay is expected to have an expected strike range of 800-1000 km.

3) The missile was nurtured at the Defence Research and Development Organisation’s premier laboratory Aeronautical Development Establishment in Bangalore’s C V Raman Nagar.

4) The cost of one missile is Rs 10 crore.

5) It has good loitering capability, good control and guidance, high degree of accuracy in terms of impact and very good stealth features.

6) The Nirbhay missile is similar to the US Tomahawks, which can fly like an aircraft and capable of travelling up to 1,000 km.

7) It can fly at tree-top level making it difficult to detect on radar and as it approaches the target, the missile can determine the point of impact while hovering over the target.

8) It gives India the capacity to launch different kinds of payloads at different ranges from various platforms at a very low cost. It can be launched from a mobile launcher.

SOURCE::: REDIFF.COM  
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“How to Get Your Nobel Prize Medal Pass Airport Security … ” !!!

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How to Get Your Nobel Prize Medal Past Airport Security

Brian P. Schmidt (L) of the United States receives the Nobel Prize for physics from Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf on December 10, 2011.

Nobel Laureate Brian Schmidt, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2011, had a close encounter with the airport security in Fargo, Nebraska. The details were reported on Friday on the blogScientific America.

Schmidt’s grandmother wanted to see the 24-carat gold medal that he’d been awarded and so, he decided to take it with him to Fargo. But first, he had to get it past airport security.

“You would think that carrying around a Nobel Prize would be uneventful, and it was uneventful, until I tried to leave Fargo with it, and went through the X-ray machine,” he says on the blog.

He was carrying the medal in his laptop bag, and when it went through the X-ray machine, it left the airport officials bewildered. Schmidt knew the cause of their concern. He was prepared to answer a few questions but wasn’t anticipating this conversation (in Schmidt’s words):

“They’re like, ‘Sir, there’s something in your bag.’
I said, ‘Yes, I think it’s this box.’
They said, ‘What’s in the box?’
I said, ‘a large gold medal,’ as one does.
So they opened it up and they said, ‘What’s it made out of?’
I said, ‘gold.’
And they’re like, ‘Uhhhh. Who gave this to you?’
‘The King of Sweden.’
‘Why did he give this to you?’
‘Because I helped discover the expansion rate of the universe was accelerating.’

At which point, they were beginning to lose their sense of humor. I explained to them it was a Nobel Prize, and their main question was, ‘Why were you in Fargo?'”

Last week, the Nobel Prize winners for 2014 were announced, including India’s Kailash Satyarthi who was awarded the Peace Prize.

Source::::ndtv.com
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” Suggest a Suitable Name to Space Robot and Win a Prize from NASA …” !!!

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Name a Flying Space Robot, and Win a Prize From NASA

NASA needs your help to name a new space robot, and you could win some cash doing it.

NASA officials are asking space fans around the world to help name, and design a mission patch for, a new free-flying robot expected to launch to theInternational Space Station in 2017. The first-place winner of the challenge will receive $1,000. Officials with the space agency put out the call to any interested space fans at New York Comic Con on Saturday.

“We have this new free-flying robot that we’re building,” Jason Crusan, director of NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems division, told a full house at Comic Con. “We don’t know what to call it. ‘Free-flying robot’ sounds kind of boring and not all that exciting, so we’re asking you to actually name the robot for us.”

Image: Free-flying robotNASA / TOPCODER
A sketch shows how a free-flying robot on the International Space Station could be moved by remote control to get a better video angle.

Second, third and fourth place also come with cash prizes. Second place will win $500, with third and fourth prize taking home $250 each. NASA has teamed up with Topcoder to organize the contest.

If an artist’s depiction of the new space automaton is any indication, the new robot may look like something out of “Star Wars.” In the artist’s concept, the robot could appear as a small, ball-shaped droid that will use fans to move itself around the interior of the International Space Station. It is expected to be able to fly itself, or be operated by remote control.

The new free-flying bot would join a group of other free-fliers already on the station. NASA’s SPHERES robots (the name is short for Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites) are already used on the orbiting outpost.

To participate in the NASA challenge to name the new robot, space fans need to register with Topcoder. Participants will reach a checkpoint where they will receive feedback on their initial designs on Oct. 22, and the challenge ends on Oct. 27. Officials will announce the winners of the competition on Nov. 2.

To participate in the challenge and learn more about it, go tohttp://www.topcoder.com/challenge-details/30046039/?type=design&noncache=true.

— Miriam Kramer, Space.com

This is a condensed version of a report from Space.com. Read the full report.Follow Miriam Kramer on Twitter and Google+. Follow Space.com on Twitter,Facebook and Google+.

First published October 15th 2014, 5:55 am  in http://www.nbcnews.com

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” Hud Hud ” Rips off the Roof Of Visakhapatnam Airport ….

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Cyclone Hudhud severely damaged Visakhapatnam airport, blowing the roof top. Airport authorities cancelled all flights from and to the city as a precaution. The extent of the damage to the facility may delay the restoration of the overall operations. The Visakhapatnam airport is the most important and biggest in Andhra Pradesh, with major domestic and international flights operating in and out of the facility.

Source::::yahoo india.com

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Image of the Day… Earth and Moon as Seen From Mercury !!!

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MESSENGER spacecraft sees lunar eclipse from Mercury

The MESSENGER spacecraft, now orbiting Mercury, caught the images to make this movie of last Wednesday’s lunar eclipse. See Earth and moon from Mercury!

Earth and Moon from Mercury orbit, with Moon entering eclipse. Imaged on Wednesday, October 8, 2014 by MESSENGER, a spacecraft in orbit around Mercury.

The MESSENGER spacecraft – which has been orbiting the sun’s innermost planet Mercury since 2011 – made this movie of the the Hunter’s Moon passing into the Earth’s shadow on October 8, 2014. The movie consists of 31 MDIS NAC (Mercury Dual Imaging System Narrow Angle Camera) frames taken two minutes apart from 09:18 UTC to 10:18 UTC on October 8. MESSENGER made the movie from a distance of 107 million kilometers / 66 million miles.

Notice the orientation of bright side of Earth. Earth’s shadow always extends in the direction opposite this bright side – or day side – approximately 1,400,000 kilometers / 1,000,000 miles into space. On October 8, the moon passed into the shadow, causing the eclipse.

The images have been enlarged 2 times and the moon brightened 25 times. The Earth was five pixels wide and the Moon one pixel wide.

The Earth – moon pair appeared in front of the constellation Aries, near the border of the constellation Pisces, as seen from Mercury.

The Earth was very bright magnitude minus 4.38 and the Moon was magnitude minus 0.03.

Read more from Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society

Bottom line: The MESSENGER spacecraft, now orbiting Mercury, caught the images to make this movie of last Wednesday’s lunar eclipse. See Earth and moon from Mercury!

SOURCE:::: earthskynews

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NASA Invites Public to send their Names into Space !!!

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Over 2.8 lakh people from around the world, including 21,729 Indians, have so far submitted their names to be inscribed on a NASA microchip that will eventually fly to Mars.

NASA is giving people a chance to shoot their names up into space on the first Orion mission, scheduled to for launch on December 4, and then eventually to the Red Planet.

http://mars.nasa.gov/layout/embed/image/485snm/

Currently, 2,80,429 people have submitted their names to fly into space.

The highest number of names submitted to NASA so far from a single country – a total of 1,13,121 – comes from the USA while the third-largest submission of names is from India, with 21,729 space enthusiasts from the nation giving their names.

Other countries with high participation include UK (22,491 names), Philippines (9,869 names) and Canada (7,760 names). Currently, only 1,828 names have been submitted from China and 1,620 from Pakistan.

The collected names will be included on a microchip the size of a dime. The first trip will be on board NASA’s initial test flight for the new Orion spacecraft. It is set for a 4.5-hour mission in orbit around Earth.

“After returning to Earth, the names will fly on future NASA exploration flights and missions to Mars. With each flight, selected individuals will accrue more miles as members of a global space-faring society,” NASA said.

To sign up, users have to go to NASA’s name-collecting site, fill out some basic information, and submit. The site then generates a digital “boarding pass.”

The deadline for getting your name on Orion’s inaugural flight is October 31.

SOURCE::::: THE HINDU.COM

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Keywords: NASA, Orion

Image of the Day… Crater in Planet Mercury …

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One of the sharpest images ever obtained of Mercury

This unnamed crater is only 1.5 kilometers / 0.93 miles wide. It’s made more visible by the deep shadows cast on a Mercury afternoon.

Very closeup look at planet Mercury. Image obtained on August 3, 2014, via NASA / JHU / APL MESSENGER spacecraft.

Here is one of sharpest images ever obtained of the sun’s innermost planet, Mercury. It’s a small crater within a 3.75-kilometer / 2.33-mile-wide area within the Hokusai Quadrangle in Mercury’s Northern Hemisphere.

What you see here is seen an unnamed crater only 1.5 kilometers / 0.93 miles wide in the hermean [Mercury] afternoon. The surrounding terrain and the crater profiles appear quite smooth, owing to many millions of years of thermal changes between the hermean day and night as well as micrometeoroids, ‘gardening’ the regolith.

The smallest craters and degraded ghost craters seen in this image are only 20 meters / 65 feet wide.

The bright streak within the crater is a cosmic ray strike on the MDIS NAC CCD.

On September 12, 2014. the MESSENGER spacecraft periherm – its closest point to Mercury – was successfully raised from: 24.3 kilometers / 15.1 miles to 94 kilometers / 58.4 miles, extending the mission further.

Periherm will be raised again on October 24, 2014 and once more on January 21, 2015, when the fuel on board MESSENGER is expected to be depleted.

MESSENGER is expected to impact Mercury on the weekend of March 28-29, 2015.

Source::::   in earth sky news

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World”s Shortest A 380 Route….Between Dubai and Kuwait !!!

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Photo: © Tommy Beattie | Dreamstime.com

Emirates now offers the world’s shortest Airbus A380 service. The Gulf carrier upgraded the Boeing 777-200LR aircraft that previously operated flights EK857 and EK858 between Dubai International Airport and Kuwait International Airport to superjumbo aircraft. Lasting one hour and 45 minutes in duration, the flight is the shortest A380 service globally. Emirates offers the route five times daily with both Boeing and Airbus aircraft. The carrier’s double-decker aircraft features 17 private suites in first class and 76 flat-bed seats in business class. Kuwait became the second destination in the Middle East to be served by Emirates’ A380, joining Riyadh International Airport in Saudi Arabia.

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Emirates Business Class

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SOURCE::: news.com.au

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Image of the day…. Image sent by MANGALYAAN on 7 Oct 2014 !!!

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India’s maiden spacecraft to Mars—Mangalyaan—has send another image of the Red Planet, captured by the camera on board.

“Another full disc image of Mars, taken by the Mars Color Camera, from an altitude of 66,543 km. Dark region towards south of the cloud formation is Elysium – the second largest volcanic province on Mars,” the facebook page of Isro Mars Orbiter said on Tuesday.

The spacecraft had beamed its first photos of Mars’ crater-marked surface a day after India successfully put the probe into the red planet’s orbit.

Just after that Isro had uploaded the regional dust storm activities over northern hemisphere of Mars – captured by Mars Color Camera.The image was taken from an altitude of 74500 km from the surface of Mars.

India joined an exclusive global club of deep space explorers on September 24 when the indigenously-made spacecraft successfully slipped into the orbit around Mars after a 10-month journey on a relatively shoe-string budget.

Source:::: http://www.hindustantimes.com

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Image of the Day…Total Lunar Eclipse…

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Are you ready for tonight’s total lunar eclipse?

Total lunar eclipse of April 14-15, 2014 by EarthSky friend and NASA eclipse expert Fred Espenak.

Photo credit: Fred Espenak

A beautiful shot of April’s total lunar eclipse. Are you ready for the total lunar eclipse of October 7-8? Here’s everything you need to know.

Send us your photos or post them to our Facebook page!

Visit Fred Espenak at his new astronomy website.

SOURCE::::: EARTH SKY NEWS

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