Expedition 46 flight engineer Tim Peake of the European Space Agency (ESA) shared this stunning nighttime photograph with his social media followers on Jan. 25, 2016, writing, “Beautiful night pass over Italy, Alps and Mediterranean.”
Image Credit: ESA/NASA
Source…….www.nasa.gov
Natarajan
Below, the Forbidden City in Beijing, China, former home of the Chinese emperor and a center of Chinese government. Above, the Forbidden City’s sky counterpart.
View larger. | Star trails over the Forbidden City, Beijing, China. Photo taken January 13, 2016 by Jeff Dai. Visit Jeff on Facebook.
Jeff Dai captured these star trails around the north celestial pole and North Star – Polaris – in a time-exposure image capturing the passage of the time above the Forbidden City in Beijing, China.
What we in the West know as the Forbidden City is a translation of the Chinese name Zijin Cheng, literally Purple Forbidden City. Jeff writes:
The Purple Forbidden City, a world heritage site today, served as the home of Chinese emperors and their households, as well as the ceremonial and political center of Chinese government, for almost 500 years.
The Purple Forbidden City is a name with significance in ancient Chinese astronomy. Purple refers to the North Star (pictured in the center of the startrails). In ancient China, it was called the Ziwei Star, and in traditional Chinese astrology was the heavenly abode of the Celestial Emperor. The surrounding celestial region, the Purple Forbidden Enclosure (pictured below) was considered the realm of the Celestial Emperor and his family.
The Forbidden City, as the residence of the terrestrial emperor, was its earthly counterpart.
View larger. | In traditional Chinese astronomy, a large area in the northern sky was known as the Purple Forbidden Enclosure. It was considered the realm of the Celestial Emperor and his family.
Bottom line: A photo shows star trails above the Forbidden City – former residence of the Chinese emperor – in Beijing, China. It’s accompanied by an image showing the Purple Forbidden Enclosure, the celestial counterpart of the Forbidden City.
From the most ancient times Bharatiyas considered Truth as God, loved it, fostered it and protected it and thereby achieved divinity.Bharatiyas were devoted to Truth, wedded to Dharma(Righteousness) and esteemed morality in society as the foremost duty. It is high time you realised what a sacred country Bharat is. In this holy land, nothing is lacking. “What cannot be found in Bharat cannot be found elsewhere” is an ancient saying. In spite of these multifarious endowments, this country is being regarded as poor and backward. This is born of delusion. When everything is available within Bharat, why go begging to other countries? Everything has originated from Bharat. Hence, having taken birth in Bharat, strive to promote the glory of Bharat. Every devotee should take a pledge to protect and promote the greatness of Bharat. Like an elephant that does not know its own strength, Bharatiyas are unaware of their power. Despite their myriad capacities, they are behaving as weaklings like an elephant before its mahout. You have to get rid of this weakness.
When Saddam Hussain invaded Kuwait during the gulf war in 1990, more than one lakh Indians were stranded there. The entire country was in a state of terror and the residents suffered great tragedies and loss. This was when the Indian government came forward to rescue the Indian community and airlifted over 1,70,000 people with the help of 488 flights in just 59 days. After everyone was rescued, Air India’s name was recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the civil airline that had evacuated the most people till date.
But Ranjit Katyal, the character played by Akshay Kumar in the movie, does not actually exist. According to the director Raja Krishna Menon, the character is an amalgamation of two gentlemen, Sunny Mathews and Vedi, who formed an unofficial committee to oversee the evacuation because they knew that Indians were not safe.
· · Bangalore ·
Today ‘Airlift’ releases, a movie based on the largest civil evacuation (Indians based in Kuwait) during the Iraqi invasion in 1990. Akshay Kumar’s leading role is based on a few people such as my grandfather, who facilitated the evacuation of nearly 170,000 Indians and brought them safely home. My grandfather stayed through the turmoil of it all and put his life at risk to secure safety for all those he could help. He is a great man and through all his success has always stressed on the importance of humility, gratitude and love, especially to those not so fortunate. An inspirational icon who has touched the hearts of many and lived a life of service. I wish I could even be half the man he is. He may not have many years left but through this movie, his legacy will live on and for that I will be forever proud
Talk to any returnee from Kuwait, who has undergone the ordeal of having escaped from Kuwait and he’ll tell you about Toyota Mathews. Mathews is the person who has helped many Indians by either organising their transport, or giving them some money which would come handy on the way, or more importantly, providing them with food and water for the arduous journey. For thousands of Indians stranded in Kuwait, Mathews has been some sort of messiah,” says one of the old reports in the picture.
The evacuation was very difficult because many people did not want to leave their well settled lives behind, and many did not have their passports and other travel documents as they had handed them over to their employers.
“The first challenge was to prepare over 100,000 travel documents. Delhi had sent two planes for evacuation. Ships began arriving a lot later. With nearly a lakh people stranded, I had to look at the alternative of bulk evacuation by road. Sunny Mathews, an extremely resourceful Indian working in Toyota, did a great job negotiating with private bus operators for evacuation via Iraq to Jordan by road,” Ashoke Kumar Sengupta, the then officer-in-charge of the Indian embassy in Kuwait, had told The Times of India in 2014.
Source……Tanaya Singh in http://www.the betterindia.com
Natarajan
ESA astronaut Tim Peake (@astro_timpeake) took this photograph over the west coast of Canada from the International Space Station on Dec. 31, 2015, and shared it with his Twitter followers on Jan. 5, writing, “I was lucky enough to fly a helicopter in these Rocky Mountains once – I’m a bit higher this time! #Principia”
The photograph shows Canada’s Coast Range of mountains, with King Island and Burke Channel in the center. The Pacific Ocean is visible at the bottom and north is to the left.
Image Credit: ESA/NASA
Source……www.nasa.gov.in
Natarajan
In July 2012, while working on a story about wildfires, NASA’s science writer and social media manager Adam P. Voiland spotted a V-shaped plume of smoke caused by a wildfire in the Caribou Mountains in northern Alberta, Canada. That image made him wonder if there are other alphabets hidden among the millions of photos of earth’s surface taken by NASA’s satellites. It was a mammoth task, so he enlisted the internet in the ambitious project. With the help of readers and colleagues, Voiland started collecting images of ephemeral features like clouds, phytoplankton blooms, and dust clouds that formed shapes reminiscent of letters. Now, over three years later, his search is completed and the results are exceedingly beautiful and educational.
Some letters, like O and C, were easy to find,” said Voiland. “Others—A, B, and R—were maddeningly difficult.”
After he had tracked down all the letters, he wrote playful captions for each photos inspired by Dr. Seuss which he was reading to his son.
Here is a selection of alphabets from the gallery.
Bonjour B, what begins with B? Biomass and boreal forests. Beirut, Barcelona, and Brasília. A bunch of babbling birds bunched up along Holla Bend.
On August 4, 2014, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired this image of the Arkansas River and the Holla Bend Wildlife Refuge. In the winter, it is common for the refuge to host 100,000 ducks and geese at once.
Big C, little C, what begins with C? This curving crescent of carbonate and quartz clinging to the coast. There is CloudSat and CALIPSO. Contrails from jets cruising over cumulus clouds. The Corolis force, chlorofluorocarbons, and crafty coccolithophores!
An astronaut captured this photograph of an artificial island at the southern end of Bahrain Island on January 23, 2011. The beach sand on tropical islands is mostly made up of calcium carbonate from the shells and skeletons of marine organisms.
What begins with E? Earth, of course. Evaporation and the exosphere. Egypt and Eyjafjallajökull. Eskers, erratics, El Niño, and EO-1. This ephemeral entourage of algae off the east coast of an island where English is spoken!
On October 25, 2009, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of a phytoplankton bloom off the coast of New Zealand.
Big F, little f. What begins with F? Firn-filled fjords and frozen forms on folded, fossil-filled facies of rock! Fog, fossil fuels, and faults. France, Fort Collins, and don’t forget Fiji.
The Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 acquired this false-color image of valleys and snow-covered mountain ranges in southeastern Tibet on August 4, 2014. Firn is a granular type of snow often found on the surface of a glacier before it has been compressed into ice
What begins with I? In situ measurements and infrared radiation. Ice sheets and isthmuses. Istanbul and Ilopango. This intriguing image of India’s Andaman Island after an intimidating incident involving an earthquake.
On February 10, 2007, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image of the Andaman Islands. The thin, bright rings surrounding several of the islands are coral reefs that were lifted up by a massive earthquake near Sumatra in 2004
What begins with J? Jason-1 and the jet stream. Jerusalem, Jakarta, and Johnson Space Center. This jade-colored coral reef juxtaposed against the jumble of the sea.
On July 17, 2015, the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8 captured this image of the Trunk Reef near Townsville, Australia
What begins with M? The meandering Mississippi. MODIS and MISR. Mumbai, Miami, and Moscow. These medial moraines merging muck and minerals for millennia!
On August 14, 2015, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured this image of glaciers in the Tian Shan mountains in northeastern Kyrgyzstan. The trail of brown sediment in the middle of the uppermost glacier is a medial moraine, a term glaciologists use to describe sediment that accumulates in the middle of merging glaciers
What begins with N? Numerous cloud condensation nuclei in the North Pacific! Nefarious nitrogen dioxide and NOx. The near infrared and NDVI and the Nimbus satellite. Nor’easters and the Nile at night.
On March 4, 2009, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite captured this image of ship tracks over the Pacific. Ship emissions contain small particles that cause the clouds to form
What begins with T? Taal and Tolbachik. Taiga, typhoons, tornadoes, and thunderstorms. The trove of trees and towns tucked into this terrain in the United Arab Emirates.
On March 9, 2015, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 captured this image of development along two roads in the United Arab Emirates
What begins with X? There are xenoliths, the xylem in xeric woodlands, and the cities of Xian and Xalapa. Not much else begins with X, so relaX and enjoy this eXcellent icy X!
On August 7, 2012, the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this false-color image of the northwest corner of Leidy Glacier in Greenland.
Z, what begins with Z? Zambia and Zimbabwe. Zenith and zooplankton. Zillions of smoke particles zipping, zooming, and zigzagging above Canada!
On July 11, 2012, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image of wildfire smoke over Canada.
See more of the gallery on NASA’s website.
Source…..www.amusingplanet.com
Natarajan
The nation’s airlines could realize more than $250 billion dollars in savings in the near future thanks to green-related technologies developed and refined by NASA’s aeronautics researchers during the past six years.
These new technologies, developed under the purview of NASA’s Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) project, could cut airline fuel use in half, pollution by 75 percent and noise to nearly one-eighth of today’s levels.
“If these technologies start finding their way into the airline fleet, our computer models show the economic impact could amount to $255 billion in operational savings between 2025 and 2050,” said Jaiwon Shin, NASA’s associate administrator for aeronautics research.
Created in 2009 and completed in 2015, ERA’s mission was to explore and document the feasibility, benefits and technical risk of inventive vehicle concepts and enabling technologies that would reduce aviation’s impact on the environment. Project researchers focused on eight major integrated technology demonstrations falling into three categories – airframe technology, propulsion technology and vehicle systems integration.
By the time ERA officially concluded its six-year run, NASA had invested more than $400 million, with another $250 million in-kind resources invested by industry partners who were involved in ERA from the start.
“It was challenging because we had a fixed window, a fixed budget, and all eight demonstrations needed to finish at the same time,” said Fayette Collier, ERA project manager. “We then had to synthesize all the results and complete our analysis so we could tell the world what the impact would be. We really did quite well.”
Here is a brief summary of each of the eight integrated technology demonstrations completed by the ERA researchers:
As part of the closeout work for the ERA project, information and results regarding each of these technology demonstrations were categorized and stored for future access and use by the aerospace industry, and will be discussed at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Sci-Tech Conference in San Diego this week.
For more information about NASA aeronautics research, go to:
http://www.nasa.gov/aeronautics
Source……….www.nasa.gov
natarajan
1st Prize Winner – Category Nature: Snorkeling with sharks by Tahitiflyshoot
“Drone images can be made where no other image can,” says Geiger, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer. “It’s like the ultimate selfie-stick.”
Let’s take a look at the some of the aerial imagery that rose to the top.
1st Prize Winner – Category Places: Above the mist by Ricardo Matiello
2nd Prize Winner – Category Nature: La Jolla by kdilliard
2nd Prize Winner – Category places: Mont-Saint-Michel, by Wanaiifilms
3rd Prize Winner – Category places: Tulip fileds byAnders@andersa.com
3rd Prize Winner – Category Nature: Lost island, Tahaa, French Polynesia, by Marama Photo Video
1st Prize Winner – Category Dronies: Where’s Wally, Limassol Carnaval, Cyprus by FlyovermediaCy
2nd Prize Winner – Popular Prizes (most liked picture): Plovidv by night, Bulgaria by Ice Fire
3rd Prize Winner – Popular Prizes (most liked picture): Glorieto Rodolfo Sanchez Taboada, Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico by Wootsor
Autodrome st-eustache, Canada by DCPE
Family of storks in the nest on an electric pole by Myszon
Christ the Redeemer, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil by Alexandre Salem
Jardin de corail dans le lagon de Taha’a – Polynésie Française, by Marama Photo Video
Xiwei Reservoir, Zoucheng, Shandong, China, by AmbroseLune
Moissons près de Metz, Lorraine, photo par drone, by Ookpik
Pont sur le Rhone, photo par drone, Rhone-Alpes, France, by Ookpik
Source……www.amsingplanet.com
Natarajan
Selected specially for a year-long mission, American astronaut Scott Kelly has been on the International Space Station (ISS) since March 2015. Early this morning, as the ISS was passing above the Indian coast, he posted some mind-bendingly beautiful photos of South India.
A rare glimpse of beautiful South #India! #GoodMorning from @Space_Station #YearInSpace
Sandy and green on the South #Indian coast. #YearInSpace
The Southern tip of #India and its blue waters. #YearInSpace
SPECTACULAR.
Source……..www.the betterindia.com
Natarajan
The atmosphere at the sparkling new Axiom Research Labs facility is informal and collegial.
This is not surprising, since most of Axiom’s 80-strong workforce is just out of college.
It’s also geeky. Equations, diagrams and Star Wars references are scribbled across the many whiteboards scattered around the open-plan office, a stone’s throw from the Bengaluru-Hyderabad highway.
That’s to be expected since almost everyone on campus has a science/engineering background. It’s driven: people walk quickly, conversations are brief and pointed.
But there’s also a sense of collective excitement and plain old-fashioned fun.
People seem to enjoy themselves. The young men and women here all opted out of safe jobs and decided to shoot for the moon instead — literally.
This makes Axiom a rarity in the aerospace business. Its flagship is Team Indus.
Some time before December 31, 2017, Team Indus aims to land a vehicle on the moon.
A rover will roll out from the lander and travel at least 500 metres “along an interesting path in a deliberate manner” across the moon’s surface. That rover will then establish a data link with Earth and transmit two HDTV video broadcasts of at least eight minutes each, covering the moon landing and movement.
The mission must also receive and retransmit other data to Earth and perform a few other tasks.
That lander and rover must be designed by Team Indus. No more than 10 per cent of the necessary financing for the moon mission can come from government sources. If Team Indus pulls this off, it will fulfil the terms of the Google Lunar XPrize, or GLX, and it would be eligible to win a share of $30 million.
Team Indus is the only Indian outfit out of 20-odd competitors. It has already won a milestone award of $1 million for its lunar lander design. If Team Indus does become the first team to fulfil all mission requirements, it could win $20 million. If it’s the second team, it could win $5 million.
Nobody has ever put together a privately funded lunar lander and rover and sent it to the moon.
The prize has been hanging fire now since 2007 with the deadline being extended multiple times.
But nobody on the Axiom campus — not even the guards from the security agency — seems to have the slightest doubt that Team Indus can do this.
That certainty filters down right from the top. The company has the chutzpah to declare that its “selenographic address” (“which will be functional sometime after 2015”) is Lunar Zone: Sinus Medii (0.50N Selenographic latitude, 1.50W Selenographic longitude).
For non-geeks, it means that the landing site has already been chosen.
Indeed, the facility includes a mockup of the landing spot where the local terrain has been recreated, complete with “lunar dust”, to test the rover’s performance.
It started as a madcap project back in 2010. Rahul Narayan, a 40-something entrepreneur and Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi graduate wondered if the terms of GLX could be met. He talked to many of his pals who had similar backgrounds. Every one of them was captivated by the dream of going to the moon.
They persuaded GLX to accept a late entry and put together a company.
In 2011, Narayan says, they crossed an inflection point and realised the dream could become reality.
Team Indus made a presentation to K Kasturirangan, the retired chief of the Indian Space Research Organisation, or ISRO. He approved of some of the concepts in that presentation, and disagreed with others. But he thought it was possible and he promised to put in a word where it counted.
In fact, Kasturirangan was pretty enthusiastic and said that Team Indus embodied “the spirit of modern India and a flavour of its future”. A little later, Team Indus met APJ Abdul Kalam who was also extremely encouraging. Various doors started opening at that point.
The first tranches of cash were raised by the founders coming up with some money from their personal accounts.
The first employees recruited themselves. Some college students landed up, asking to be allowed to intern with the company that was then situated in Noida. They told their friends and juniors, and a pipeline was created.
Dhruv Batra is one of the old-buddy network Narayan tapped. He manages project delivery. He made alternative arrangements to run his Delhi-centric business and moved to Bengaluru when Team Indus shifted out of Noida.
Ramnath Babu, who now heads the structures team for Team Indus, was based in Mumbai from where he was running his business. He moved, first to Noida and then to Bengaluru, cajoling his brother to take over his business so that he could get involved in the mission.
Babu and Batra say that absolutely everybody has stretched selflessly to help Team Indus. Equipment that they thought would take six months to fabricate was delivered in 100 days. Teams at the Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad, and at the National Aerospace Lab, Bengaluru, worked overtime to test equipment for Team Indus.
Sheelika Ravishankar, who handles HR and other soft functions, says she originally pitched in part-time just to help set things up.
Part-time turned into full-time and she jokes that despite being the only person in Team Indus without a science/tech background, she has ended up interviewing people for the most arcane engineering functions. Ravishankar says there’s been a steady stream of boys (and a few girls) wanting to first intern and then work when they graduate.
Most of the younger members of Team Indus went to topnotch engineering colleges. They could have gone on to do much safer (and boring) things.
Instead, these 24-year-olds spend weekends working because they really like what they’re doing.
Vishesh Vatsal practically dances with delight as he draws a squiggly flight path to explain how the landing will take place. Suranjan Mallick turns into a muffled voice under the mock-up of the lander as he explains how the paired rockets will be vectored to ensure changes in flight directions. Guruditya Sinha waves his arms in three directions as he shows how the telemetry and telecommand system will work.
There is pride alongside the passion. Everybody is well aware that Team Indus represents India. They know that winning the GLX would be seen as another big achievement for India in space.
That passion and pride may be infectious but it also needs direction. This is where the third management layer comes in. In demographic terms, Team Indus is unusual. There are the 25-year-olds who form the bulk of the project team. There are a few people in their 40s — the founders.
Up above everyone, in terms of age and experience, there is the panel of technical advisers. All of them are retired ISRO personnel. PS Nair and NC Bhat worked on the Aryabhatta Project, which launched India’s first satellite way back in 1975. RV Perumal, P Natarajan and RK Sharma are the other veterans with wide ranging expertise.
Incidentally, the internal designations draw on the Star Wars universe. The founders are Jedi Masters. The tech advisers are Jedi Commanders. There are also Troopers and Skywalkers and presumably, padawans.
The unusual dynamic works brilliantly. The ISRO veterans quickly rule out approaches that are unlikely to work. They understand processes and they know how to test equipment, for instance. They are completely familiar with the Indian space ecosystem.
At the same time, the veterans seem to enjoy the fresh approach of the youngsters they interact with. For their part, the youngsters (and the founders) are all praise for the “sirs” and their ability to find rapid solutions as well as do the meticulous work of testing everything.
ISRO encouraged the creation of a space-industrial complex because it tendered out to private vendors.
Although Team Indus cannot take government financing, it is relying heavily on that ecosystem to fabricate its designs and to test.
Team Indus has hired testing facilities at the Space Applications Centre and National Aerospace Laboratories.
The lander will launch on ISRO’s trusty PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle). Again, this is where the technical advisors have come in handy — they know everybody and have ensured complete compatibility.
Everything will be designed by Team Indus and components sourced from everywhere will finally be put together at the Axiom facility.
There are three formal partners: L&T’s heavy engineering division is helping put the lander and rover together, while Sasken Communications and Tata Communications are aiding with the communications and control systems.
There are multiple vendors: at least 120 from all over the world. The lander’s engines and rockets, for instance, may come from Japan. The solar panels may be sourced from America and the battery could be British.
The lander, which will have the rover stored inside it, will be fitted on top of a PSLV rocket that will launch the lander into earth-orbit.
The lander will then use its own engine to match orbits with the moon. It could take nine swings or even more to rendezvous. Once that is done, it will use its eight auxiliary rockets to make course corrections and land at the designated spot.
After the lander is securely down, a panel will open and the rover will roll out. The rover will then start moving around (very slowly) and recording video.
The lander will relay that video to Earth. Everything will be monitored from the earth stations.
The engineering problems are formidable. The entire landing sequence has to be pre-programmed and autonomous.
There is a lag of almost four seconds when relaying signals to the moon and back. Unlike Chandrayaan, the lander must remain in working condition because it has to relay signals. Redundancy must be built in because component failure could otherwise jeopardise the whole mission.
The equipment within the lander must be protected, not only from the physical shocks of takeoff and landing but also from the heat generated by its rockets. On the moon, internal temperatures must be controlled, though the external temperature will vary a lot.
Before getting to the moon, the lander will pass through the Van Allen radiation belt.
All the delicate electronic equipment must be radiation-hardened to keep it from getting fried. There will be periods of eclipse, when solar panels will be ineffective. The solar panels must open correctly and be properly oriented.
Narayan guesses it could take over $30 million for the mission. Axiom has raised money several times. It started with the founders pitching in.
There was a funding round in March 2015 with investors like Nandan Nilekani and Ajai Chowdhry coming in. Another round of funding is currently in progress. There is talk of a possible round of crowd-sourced corporate funding.
There are two other concurrent projects, which should eventually pay their way.
One is satellite bus development, which involves figuring out spacecraft designs that can effectively launch multiple satellites. The other is the development of high altitude long endurance drones.
Eventually, Axiom might become a profitable aerospace company that earns its bread and butter from drones and satellite buses. But GLX will be a hard act to beat — in the public imagination at least.
Source….www.rediff.com
natarajan
Scott Kelly 
Take off with Natarajan 