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Isro’s aim: 10% share in global space economy | Bengaluru News – Times of India

Editor — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 15:06:27 +0000

New Isro chief S Somanath (Photo: Union minister Jitendra Singh/Twitter)

BENGALURU: Isro chairman S Somanath said in Bengaluru on Monday that the agency has its eyes set on increasing India’s share in the global space economy from about 2% to a two-digit number.
Speaking at the 75th Independence Day celebrations at Isro headquarters, he said: “…What lies ahead is more important than what we’ve accomplished.” Expressing various institutes’ desired growth path for the next 25 years, he said the department of space’s vision was: “To see our share of space economy (grow) from less than 2% of the global economy to a higher value of typically 10%.
” For this to be achieved in the next few years, he believed drastic structural changes are needed in the way the department works.Somnath saw tremendous growth in business opportunities in the space sector and said there is a need to work towards it by enabling people with the right aptitude and capability.
“While Isro and DoS continue to make great strides in technology development…we will look at the private ecosystem for making the business transactions in space sector grow,” he said.

News Courtesy: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Antibodies that may lead to next-gen vaccines for all Covid strains found

Editor — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 14:58:47 +0000

LOS ANGELES: Scientists have identified antibodies that are effective against many different SARS-CoV-2 variants, an advance that paves the way for next-generation vaccines which could protect from different Covid-19 strains. The antibodies identified in monkeys by a team at The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, US are also effective against other SARS viruses like SARS-CoV-1, the highly lethal virus that caused an outbreak in 2003.
The results show that certain animals are more able to make these types of “pan-SARS virus” antibodies than humans, giving scientists clues as to how to make better vaccines.
The findings, published on Thursday in the journal Science Translational Medicine, reveal the antibody structures that produce this more comprehensive immune response.
The researchers found these neutralising antibodies recognise a viral region in the spike protein — which the virus uses to enter and infect the cells — that is relatively more conserved.
This means that the region is present across many different SARS viruses, and is therefore less likely to mutate over time, they said.
The finding may help develop next-generation vaccines that can offer additional protection against emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants and other SARS-related viruses, according to the researchers.
“If we can design vaccines that elicit the similar broad responses that we have seen in this study, these treatments could enable broader protection against the virus and variants of concern,” said study senior author Raiees Andrabi, an investigator at The Scripps Research Institute.
The researchers immunised rhesus macaque monkeys with the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Two shots were administered, resembling a similar strategy used with currently available vaccines in humans.
However, unlike the vaccines, the macaques were shown to have a broad neutralising antibody response against the virus, including variants such as Omicron.
The scientists found these antibodies recognise a conserved region on the edge of the site where the spike protein binds to host cells, called the angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor binding site.
This is different than the region where the majority of human antibodies target, which overlaps more with the ACE2 receptor binding site and is more variable to change, they said.
“The antibody structures reveal an important area common to multiple SARS-related viruses,” said study co-senior author Ian Wilson.
“This region to date has rarely been seen to be targeted by human antibodies and suggests additional strategies that can be used to coax our immune system into recognising this particular region of the virus,” Wilson said.
The researchers notes that the macaque’s gene coding for these broad neutralising antibodies — known as IGHV3-73 — is not the same in humans.
The dominant immune response in humans is related to the IGHV3-53 gene, which produces a potent but much narrower neutralising antibody response, they said.
However, the scientists said this finding paves the way to rationally design and engineer vaccines or vaccine-adjuvant combinations that elicit more broad protection against SARS-CoV-2 and its many variants.
“According to our study, the macaques have an antibody gene that offers them more protection against SARS viruses,” said Dennis Burton, a co-senior author of the study.
“This observation teaches us that studying the effect of a vaccine in monkeys can only take us so far but also reveals a new target for our vaccine efforts that we might be able to exploit by advanced protein design strategies,” Burton added.

News Courtesy: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

‘Extreme heat belt’ to cover middle of US by 2053: Report

Editor — Thu, 01 Sep 2022 14:28:32 +0000

WASHINGTON: An area of intensely warm weather — a so-called “extreme heat belt” — with at least one day per year in which the heat index hits 125 Fahrenheit (52C), is expected to cover a US region home to more than 100 million people by the year 2053, according to a new study.
The research, carried out by nonprofit First Street Foundation, used a peer-reviewed model built with public and third-party data to estimate heat risk at what they called a “hyper-local” scale of 30 square meters.
First Street Foundation’s mission is to make climate risk modeling accessible to the public, government and industry representatives, such as real estate investors and insurers.
A key finding from the study was that heat exceeding the threshold of the National Weather Service’s highest category — called “Extreme Danger,” or above 125F — was expected to impact 8.1 million people in 2023 and grow to 107 million people in 2053, a 13-fold increase.
This would encompass a geographic region stretching from northern Texas and Louisiana to Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin — inland areas far from the more temperate weather often seen near the coasts.
Heat index, also known as the apparent temperature, is what the outside temperature really feels like to the human body when relative humidity is combined with air temperature.
To create their model, the research team examined satellite-derived land surface temperatures and air temperatures between 2014 and 2020, to help understand the exact relationship between the two measurements.
This information was further studied by factoring in elevation, how water is absorbed in the area, the distance to surface water and the distance to a coast.
The model was then scaled to future climate conditions, using a “middle of the road” scenario envisaged by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in which carbon dioxide levels start falling by mid-century, but do not reach net zero by 2100.
Beyond “Extreme Danger” days, areas across the whole country are expected to experience hotter temperatures, with varying degrees of resilience.
“These increases in local temperatures result in significant implications for communities that are not acclimated to warmer weather relative to their normal climate,” the report said.
For example, a 10 percent temperature increase in the northeastern state of Maine may be as dangerous as a 10 percent increase in the southwestern state of Texas, despite the higher absolute temperatures seen in Texas.
The biggest predicted shift in local temperature occurred in Miami-Dade County, Florida, which currently sees seven days per year at its hottest temperature of 103 Fahrenheit. By 2053, that number is expected to increase to 34 days at 103 degrees.
And the increase in air conditioning use that is likely to result from such temperature spikes will strain energy grids, the report warned, leading to more frequent, longer lasting brownouts.

News & Photo Courtesy: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Space mission shows Earth’s water may be from asteroids: Study

Editor — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 21:18:12 +0000

TOKYO: Water may have been brought to Earth by asteroids from the outer edges of the solar system, scientists said after analysing rare samples collected on a six-year Japanese space mission.
In a quest to shed light on the origins of life and the formation of the universe, researchers are scrutinising material brought back to earth in 2020 from the asteroid Ryugu.
The 5.4 grams (0.2 ounces) of rocks and dust were gathered by a Japanese space probe, called Hayabusa-2, that landed on the celestial body and fired an “impactor” into its surface.
Studies on the material are beginning to be published, and in June, one group of researchers said they had found organic material which showed that some of the building blocks of life on Earth, amino acids, may have been formed in space.
In a new paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, scientists said the Ryugu samples could give clues to the mystery of how oceans appeared on Earth billions of years ago.
“Volatile and organic-rich C-type asteroids may have been one of the main sources of Earth’s water,” said the study by scientists from Japan and other countries, published Monday.
“The delivery of volatiles (that is, organics and water) to the Earth is still a subject of notable debate,” it said.
But the organic materials found “in Ryugu particles, identified in this study, probably represent one important source of volatiles”.
The scientists hypothesised that such material probably has an “outer Solar System origin”, but said it was “unlikely to be the only source of volatiles delivered to the early Earth”.
Hayabusa-2 was launched in 2014 on its mission to Ryugu, around 300 million kilometres away, and returned to Earth’s orbit two years ago to drop off a capsule containing the sample.
In the Nature Astronomy study, the researchers again hailed the findings made possible by the mission.
“Ryugu particles are undoubtedly among the most uncontaminated Solar System materials available for laboratory study and ongoing investigations of these precious samples will certainly expand our understanding of early Solar System processes,” the study said.

News and Photo Courtesy: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Alcohol use and high BMI key risk factors in India’s cancer deaths

Editor — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 07:30:59 +0000

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NEW DELHI: Smoking, alcohol use, high BMI (Body Mass Index) and other known risk factors were responsible for over 37% of cancer deaths in India in 2019, as per a new research published in the Lancet.
Globally 44.4% (4.5 million) of all cancer deaths were attributable to risk factors, says the study. The estimates are based on the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk factors Report, 2019.

According to the study, nearly half (50.6%) of all cancer deaths in men globally in 2019 (2.8 million) were due to known risk factors, compared with 36.3% all female cancer deaths (1.5 million) attributable to these factors.
Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine and a co-senior author of the study, said, “Smoking continues to be the leading risk factor for cancer globally, with other substantial contributors to cancer burden varying.”
In the study, researchers investigated how 34 behavioural, metabolic, environmental and occupational risk factors contributed to deaths and ill health due to 23 cancer types in 2019. Changes in cancer burden between 2010 and 2019 due to the risk factors were also assessed.
They found that the leading risk factors globally for cancer deaths and ill health for both sexes were smoking, alcohol use and high BMI.
The leading cause of risk-attributable cancer death for both men and women globally were tracheal, bronchus and lung cancer, which accounted for 36.9% of all cancer deaths attributable to risk factors.
This was followed by colon and rectum cancer (13.3%), oesophageal cancer (9.7%), and stomach cancer (6.6%) in men and cervical cancer (17.9%), colon and rectum cancer (15.8%), and breast cancer (11%).
Between 2010 and 2019, cancer deaths due to risk factors rose by 20.4% globally, increasing from 3.7 million to 4.45 million. Ill health due to cancer increased by 16.8% over the same period, rising from 89.9 million to 105 million DALYs (Disability-Adjusted Life Years), the Lancet statement said. Metabolic risks accounted for the greatest increase in cancer deaths and ill health, with deaths increasing by 34.7% (6,43,000 deaths in 2010 to 865,000 in 2019) and DALYs by 33.3% (14.6 million in 2010 to 19.4 million in 2019), it added.

News Courtesy: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

James Webb Space Telescope shows Jupiter’s auroras, tiny moons

Editor — Wed, 31 Aug 2022 01:29:02 +0000

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CAPE CANAVERAL: The world’s newest and biggest space telescope is showing Jupiter as never before, auroras and all.
Scientists released the shots Monday of the solar system’s biggest planet.
The James Webb Space Telescope took the photos in July, capturing unprecedented views of Jupiter’s northern and southern lights, and swirling polar haze. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a storm big enough to swallow Earth, stands out brightly alongside countless smaller storms.
One wide-field picture is particularly dramatic, showing the faint rings around the planet, as well as two tiny moons against a glittering background of galaxies.
“We’ve never seen Jupiter like this. It’s all quite incredible,” said planetary astronomer Imke de Pater, of the University of California, Berkeley, who helped lead the observations.
“We hadn’t really expected it to be this good, to be honest,” she added in a statement.
The infrared images were artificially colored in blue, white, green, yellow and orange, according to the U.S.-French research team, to make the features stand out.
NASA and the European Space Agency’s $10 billion successor to the Hubble Space Telescope rocketed away at the end of last year and has been observing the cosmos in the infrared since summer. Scientists hope to behold the dawn of the universe with Webb, peering all the way back to when the first stars and galaxies were forming 13.7 billion years ago.
The observatory is positioned 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth.

News Courtesy: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Back to Moon: Nasa set to launch Artemis-1 lunar mission on Monday

Editor — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 18:56:23 +0000

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In a step towards sending humans back to Moon over half a century later, Nasa is set to launch Artemis-1 mission on Monday, which will be the US space agency’s first non-crew mission to the Moon in recent times that will pave the way for the manned orbital mission (Artemis-2) and manned landing mission (Artemis 3) in 2025.
The new Space Launch System (SLS) will be the most powerful rocket engine ever flown to space, even more powerful than Apollo‘s Saturn V rocket that took astronauts to the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s. The Orion spacecraft that will be launched by the rocket is scheduled to travel to the Moon, deploy some small satellites and then settle into orbit.
“Artemis-I will be the first in a series of increasingly complex missions to build a long-term human presence at the Moon for decades to come. The primary goals for Artemis I are to demonstrate Orion’s systems in a spaceflight environment and ensure a safe re-entry, descent, splashdown and recovery prior to the first flight with crew on Artemis II,” says Nasa.
“This is a mission that truly will do what hasn’t been done and learn what isn’t known,” said Mike Sarafin, Artemis I mission manager at Nasa headquarters in Washington.
Artemis-1 will test how well SLS and Orion can complete a mission to the Moon and back and will ensure that both rocket and the spacecraft can safely ferry astronauts that far into space and back. The spacecraft will stay in orbit for approximately six days to collect data and allow mission controllers to assess the performance of the spacecraft.
The SLS is a new type of rocket system because it has both a combination of liquid oxygen and hydrogen main engines and two strap-on solid rocket boosters derived from the space shuttle. It’s really a hybrid between the space shuttle and Apollo’s Saturn V rocket.
The mission is also going to carry a series of small satellites that will be placed in orbit of the Moon. Those will do some useful precursor science, everything from looking further into the permanently shadowed craters where scientists think there is water to just doing more measurements of the radiation environment.
The Artemis programme is driven by a number of different goals. It includes in situ resource utilisation, which means using resources at hand like water ice and lunar soil to produce food, fuel and building materials. The Nasa administration has said that in that first crewed flight, on Artemis-3, there will be at least one woman and very likely a person of colour.
Though no humans will be aboard in the Artemis-1, a mannequin — nicknamed Commander Moonikin Campos to honor a legendary Nasa engineer who helped bring Apollo-13 safely back to Earth — will be on board, sitting inside the commander’s seat. Various sensors on its seat and spacesuit will gather data about vibrations, acceleration and radiation throughout the mission. Two additional mannequin torsos will be on board, outfitted with thousands of sensors to record even more details.The main objective of the uncrewed mission is to test the rocket’s heat shield, which will protect astronauts upon re-entry, Nasa administrator Bill Nelson said.
Additionally, a package called Callisto, named for the companion of Artemis in Greek mythology, will be flying inside Orion. Callisto houses both an Amazon Alexa and a touchscreen that will host Cisco’s Webex software. The payload is meant to test out smart tools that future astronauts might use on Orion in order to communicate over video with the mission control and get information about where they are in space.

News Courtesy: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

NASA shoots for the Moon, on its way to Mars

Editor — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 12:29:16 +0000

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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, US: NASA’s most powerful rocket yet is set to blast off Monday on the maiden voyage of a mission to take humans back to the Moon, and eventually to Mars.
Fifty years after the last Apollo mission, the space program called Artemis is to get under way with the blast off of the uncrewed 322-foot (98-meter) Space Launch System (SLS) rocket at 8:33 am (1233 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Tens of thousands of people are on hand along the beaches of Florida to watch this launch that’s been decades in the making. They include Vice President Kamala Harris.
Hotels around Cape Canaveral are booked solid with between 100,000 and 200,000 spectators expected to attend the launch.
The goal of the flight, baptized Artemis 1, is to test the SLS and the Orion crew capsule that sits atop the rocket.
The capsule will orbit the Moon to see if the vessel is safe for people in the near future. At some point Artemis will see a woman and a person of color walk on the Moon for the first time.
“This mission goes with a lot of hopes and dreams of a lot of people. And we now are the Artemis generation,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson said Saturday.
The massive orange-and-white rocket has been sitting on the space center’s Launch Complex 39B for a week.
Its fuel tanks were to be filled overnight Sunday into Monday with more than three million liters of liquid hydrogen and oxygen.
NASA said there is an 80 percent chance of acceptable weather for a liftoff on time at the beginning of a launch window lasting two hours.
For the first time a woman — Charlie Blackwell-Thompson — will give the final green light for liftoff. Women now account for 30 percent of the staff in the control room; there was just one back with Apollo 11.
Cameras will capture every moment of the 42-day trip and include a selfie of the spacecraft with the Moon and Earth in the background.
The Orion capsule will orbit around the Moon, coming within 60 miles (100 kilometers) at its closest approach and then firing its engines to get to a distance 40,000 miles beyond, a record for a spacecraft rated to carry humans.
Besides the weather, any kind of technical snafu could delay the liftoff at the last minute, NASA officials have said, stressing that this is a test flight.
If the rocket is unable to take off on Monday, September 2 and 5 have been penciled in as alternative flight dates.
One of the primary objectives of the mission is to test the capsule’s heat shield, which at 16 feet in diameter is the largest ever built.
On its return to the Earth’s atmosphere, the heat shield will have to withstand a speed of 25,000 miles per hour and a temperature of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,760 degrees Celsius). That is half as hot as the Sun.
Taking the place of people for now, dummies fitted with sensors will take the place of crew members, recording acceleration, vibration and radiation levels.
It will deploy small satellites to study the lunar surface.
A complete failure would be devastating for a program that is costing $4.1 billion per launch and is already running years behind schedule.
“What we are starting with the launch Monday is not a near term sprint, but a long term marathon to bring the solar system and beyond into our sphere,” said Bhavya Lal, NASA associate administrator for technology, policy, and strategy.
The next mission, Artemis 2, will take astronauts into orbit around the Moon without landing on its surface. The crew of Artemis 3 is to land on the Moon in 2025 at the earliest.
While the Apollo astronauts who walked on the Moon were exclusively white men, the Artemis program plans to include the first woman and person of color.
And since humans have already visited the Moon, Artemis has its sights set on another lofty goal — an eventual crewed mission to Mars.
The Artemis program is to establish a lasting human presence on the Moon with an orbiting space station known as Gateway and a base on the surface.
Gateway would serve as a staging and refueling station for a voyage to Mars that would take a minimum of several months.

News Courtesy: timesofindia.indiatimes.com

NASA scrubs launch of new moon rocket after engine problem

Editor — Tue, 30 Aug 2022 04:41:47 +0000

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CAPE CANAVERAL: NASA called off the launch of its mighty new moon rocket on its debut flight with three test dummies aboard Monday after a last-minute cascade of problems culminating in unexplained trouble related to an engine.
The next launch attempt will not take place until Friday at the earliest and could be delayed until mid-September or later.
The mission will be the first flight in NASA’s Artemis project, a quest to put astronauts back on the moon for the first time since the Apollo program ended 50 years ago.
As precious minutes ticked away Monday morning, NASA repeatedly stopped and started the fueling of the Space Launch System rocket because of a leak of highly explosive hydrogen, eventually succeeding in reducing the seepage. The leak happened in the same place that saw seepage during a dress rehearsal in the spring.
The fueling already was running nearly an hour late because of thunderstorms off Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.
Then, NASA ran into new trouble when it was unable to properly chill one of the rocket’s four main engines, officials said. Engineers struggled to pinpoint the source of the problem well after the launch postponement was announced.
Mission manager Mike Sarafin said the fault did not appear to be with the engine itself but with the plumbing leading to it.
Complicating matters, as engineers were trying to troubleshoot that problem on the launch pad, yet another hydrogen leak developed, this one involving a vent valve higher up on the rocket, Sarafin said.
“This is a very complicated machine, a very complicated system, and all those things have to work, and you don’t want to light the candle until it’s ready to go,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.
Referring to launch delays, he said: “It’s just part of the space business and it’s part of, particularly, a test flight.”
The rocket was set to lift off on a flight to propel a crew capsule into orbit around the moon. The six-week mission was scheduled to end with the capsule returning to Earth in a splashdown in the Pacific in October.
The 322-foot (98-meter) spaceship is the most powerful rocket ever built by NASA, out-muscling even the Saturn V that took the Apollo astronauts to the moon.
The dummies inside the Orion capsule were fitted with sensors to measure vibration, cosmic radiation and other conditions during the shakedown flight, meant to stress-test the spacecraft and push it to its limits in ways that would never be attempted if humans were aboard.
Asked about the possibility of another launch attempt on Friday, mission manager Sarafin said, “We really need time to look at all the information, all the data. We’re going to play all nine innings here.”
Even though no one was on board, thousands of people jammed the coast to see the rocket soar. Vice President Kamala Harris and Apollo 10 astronaut Tom Stafford were among the VIPs who arrived.
Assuming the shakedown flight goes well, astronauts will climb aboard for the second Artemis mission and fly around the moon and back as soon as 2024. A two-person lunar landing could follow by the end of 2025.
The problems seen Monday were reminiscent of NASA’s space shuttle era, when hydrogen fuel leaks disrupted countdowns and delayed a string of launches back in 1990.
Later in the morning, NASA also officials spotted what they feared was a crack or some other defect on the core stage — the big orange fuel tank with four main engines on it — but they later said it appeared to be just a buildup of frost in a crevice of the insulating foam.
Launch director Charlie Blackwell-Thompson and her team also had to deal with sluggish communication between the Orion capsule and launch control. The problem required what turned out to be a simple fix.
Even if there had been no technical snags, thunderstorms ultimately would have prevented a liftoff, NASA said. Dark clouds and rain gathered over the launch site as soon as the countdown was halted, and thunder echoed across the coast.

News Courtesy: timesofindia.indiatimes.com