My Science School

Dr Vikram Sarabhai is widely known as the ‘father of the Indian space programme’. He helped establish the Indian space agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), and led it as chairman. 

Son of Ambalal Sarabhai, he came from the famous Sarabhai family of India who were major industrialists committed to the Indian independence movement. Vikram Sarabhai married the classical dancer Mrinalini in 1942. The couple had two children. His daughter Mallika gained prominence as an actress and activist, and his son Kartikeya too became an active person in science. During his lifetime, he practiced Jainism. He attended Gujarat College, Ahmedabad, but later moved to the University of Cambridge, England, where he took his tripos in natural sciences in 1940. In 1945 he returned to Cambridge to pursue a doctorate and wrote a thesis, “Cosmic Ray Investigations in Tropical Latitudes,” in 1947.

He led the Sarabhai family-owned business conglomerate. His interests varied from science to sports to statistics. He set up the Operations Research Group (ORG), the first market research organization in the country. Most notable among the many institutes he helped set up are the Nehru Foundation for Development in Ahmedabad, the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIMA), the Ahmedabad Textile Industry's Research Association (ATIRA) and the (CEPT). Along with his wife Mrinalini Sarabhai, he founded the Darpana Academy of Performing Arts. Other projects and institutions initiated or established by him include the Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR) in Kalpakkam, Variable Energy Cyclotron Project in Calcutta, Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) in Hyderabad and Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) in Jaduguda, Jharkhand.

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It was in November 1963 that India’s first rocket launch took off from a nondescript fishing village called Thumba on the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala. The village soon came to be known as the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launch Station. The rocket was so small and light that it was transported on a bicycle to the Thumba launch station.

The first rockets were two-stage rockets imported from Russia (M-100) and France (Centaure). While the M-100 could carry a payload of 70 kg to an altitude of 85 km, the Centaure was capable of reaching 150 km with a payload of approximately 30 kg.

ISRO started launching indigenously made sounding rockets from 1965 and experience gained was of immense value in the mastering of solid propellant technology. In 1975, all sounding rocket activities were consolidated under the Rohini Sounding Rocket (RSR) Programme. RH-75, with a diameter of 75mm was the first truly Indian sounding rocket, which was followed by RH-100 and RH-125 rockets.  The sounding rocket programme was the bedrock on which the edifice of launch vehicle technology in ISRO could be built. It is possible to conduct coordinated campaigns by simultaneously launching sounding rockets from different locations. It is also possible to launch several sounding rockets in a single day.

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Recently, Blue Origin, the aerospace company owned by Jeff Bezos of Amazon, announced that it had chosen 82-year-old Walky Funk, a female aerospace pioneer, to rocket into space on its first passenger flight on July 20. She will not only be one of the passengers on board this crewed flight, but also the oldest to travel to space. Bezos, his brother Mark, and the winner of a charity auction (who has bid $28 million for a seat on this New Shepard flight) will be her co-passengers.

BBefore this, Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson had scheduled a short up-and-down flight along with three others to suborbital space on July 11.

But why are these space flights talked about a lot?

Space tourism

Space tourism is nothing but people travelling to space for fun or recreational purposes. Astronauts have been travelling to space since the 1960s to perform planets. If you are wondering whether Funk and team would be the first space tourists, the answer is “no”. American multi-millionaire Dennis Tito was the first space tourist. He is said to have paid $20 million for hitching a ride alongside trained cosmonauts on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station in the year 2001. What is distinct about the Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin flights is this is the first time private companies are attempting to send private individuals to space. The objective is to make space travel accessible to civilians. But whether space tourism will be within our reach, considering the exorbitant price involved for the experience, is debatable. However, these are just early days.

Besides Bezos’ Blue Origin and Branson’s Virgin Galactic, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is keen on ushering in a new era of private commercial space travel, wherein people will be transported on short, suborbital flights to the edge of space.

Suborbital flights

Suborbital flights ascend about 100 km above the Earth to let travellers experience a few minutes in space. They also enable travellers to experience weightlessness and to catch a glimpse of the planet's curvature through viewing windows before returning to Earth. A suborbital flight does not have the power or speed to achieve orbit. SpaceX, which already transports astronauts to actual orbit and to the International Space Station, plans an all-civilian mission to space later this year.

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German-born theoretical physicist Albert Einstein is someone who needs no introduction. Best known for developing the theory of relativity, Einstein has made several other important contributions as well.

Einstein had predicted the existence of gravitational waves - ripples in space-time caused by some of the most energetic processes in the universe - in 1916 in his general theory of relativity. It was nearly a 100 years later that gravitational waves were detected from the collision of two black holes for the first time in 2015. The first detection of a neutron star-neutron star collision took place in 2017. And now, finally, black hole-neutron star collisions have been observed.

Observed in January 2020

While the paper announcing the discovery of collisions between black holes and neutron stars beyond doubt was published in June 2021, the two collisions that were observed actually took place separately in January 2020.

The first one observed, on January 5, involved a black hole nine times massive when compared with our sun and a neutron star that is almost twice as massive as our sun. The second one on January 15 involved a black hole 5.7 times as massive as our sun and a neutron star that was 1.5 times massive when compared to our sun.

Types of merger

Before these observations, scientists weren't sure if the supermassive black holes will simply swallow the lighter neutron stars in a single bite or if the forces of the black hole would shred the neutron star before taking it in. The latter case would be accompanied by glowing debris, which can be picked up by powerful telescopes at our disposal even though they are taking place at astronomically vast distances.

Physicists were able to confirm that no glows or electromagnetic signals were detected in either of these collisions, meaning that the black holes swallowed the neutron stars in a single bite in these two instances at least. Scientists, however, haven't ruled out the possibility of future collisions producing glows or electromagnetic signals owing to the many factors that are at play.

The discovery of these collisions opens up a universe of possibilities for the scientists. Apart from getting us on the right path towards understanding how these binaries (two star systems) are formed, they could also tell us what proportion of the universe's heavier elements (gold, platinum, and others) are produced by such collisions.

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The inner edge of the Kuiper Belt begins at the orbit of Neptune, at about 30 AU from the Sun. (1 AU, or astronomical unit, is the distance from Earth to the Sun.)

The inner, main region of the Kuiper belt ends around 50 AU from the Sun. Overlapping the outer edge of the main part of the Kuiper Belt is a second region called the scattered disk, which continues outward to nearly 1,000 AU, with some bodies on orbits that go even farther beyond.

Just outside of Neptune’s orbit is a ring of icy bodies. We call it the Kuiper Belt.

This is where you’ll find dwarf planet Pluto. It’s the most famous of the objects floating in the Kuiper Belt, which are also called Kuiper Belt Objects, or KBOs.

There are bits of rock and ice, comets and dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt. Besides Pluto and a bunch of comets, other interesting Kuiper Belt Objects are Eris, Makemake and Haumea. They are dwarf planets like Pluto.

Credit : Solar System Exploration

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The Hubble telescope is named after astronomer Edwin Hubble and is one of NASA's Great Observatories, along with the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (1991–2000), the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Spitzer Space Telescope (2003–2020).

Hubble is the only telescope designed to be maintained in space by astronauts. Five Space Shuttle missions have repaired, upgraded, and replaced systems on the telescope, including all five of the main instruments. The fifth mission was initially canceled on safety grounds following the Columbia disaster (2003), but NASA administrator Michael D. Griffin approved the fifth servicing mission which was completed in 2009. The telescope completed 30 years in operation in April 2020 and could last until 2030–2040. One successor to the Hubble telescope is the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) which is tentatively scheduled to be launched in late 2021.

Hubble's launch and deployment in April 1990 marked the most significant advance in astronomy since Galileo's telescope. Thanks to five servicing missions and more than 25 years of operation, our view of the universe and our place within it has never been the same.

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Planetary conjunction is a celestial event wherein two planets appear to be closer to each other but, they are far away in space.

Mars and Venus will be closest to each other on July 13, 2021. Such a celestial event is known as planetary conjunction wherein two planets appear to be closer to each other but, they are far away in space.

From Earth, both Mars and Venus will appear to be 0.5 degrees apart. Both the planets could be spotted with a telescope or binoculars in the same frame.

The last time, the planetary conjunction between Mars and Venus happened on August 24, 2019, however, the planets were not visible with the naked eyes. The planetary conjunction between both planets that occurred on October 5, 2017, was the last visible event. The next planetary conjunction between Mars and Venus is expected to occur on February 22, 2024, and a conjunction as close as the one happening on July 12, 2021, will occur on May 11, 2034.

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Centaurs are icy planetesimals located between Jupiter and Neptune. They cross the orbits of one or more of the giant planets in their journey around the Sun, and interactions with these outer planets cause the orbits of Centaurs to be inherently unstable.

No centaur has been photographed up close, although there is evidence that Saturn's moon Phoebe, imaged by the Cassini probe in 2004, may be a captured centaur that originated in the Kuiper belt. In addition, the Hubble Space Telescope has gleaned some information about the surface features of 8405 Asbolus.

Of the objects known to occupy centaur-like orbits, approximately 30 have been found to display comet-like dust comas, with three, 2060 Chiron, 60558 Echeclus, and 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1, having detectable levels of volatile production in orbits entirely beyond Jupiter.Chiron and Echeclus are therefore classified as both asteroids and comets, while Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 has always held a comet designation. Other centaurs, such as 52872 Okyrhoe, are suspected of having shown comas. Any centaur that is perturbed close enough to the Sun is expected to become a comet.

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In astronomy, a trojan is a small celestial body (mostly asteroids) that shares the orbit of a larger one, remaining in a stable orbit approximately 60° ahead or behind the main body near one of its Lagrangian points L4 and L5. Trojans can share the orbits of planets or of large moons.

In the Solar System, most known trojans share the orbit of Jupiter. They are divided into the Greek camp at L4 (ahead of Jupiter) and the Trojan camp at L5 (trailing Jupiter). More than a million Jupiter trojans larger than one kilometer are thought to exist, of which more than 7,000 are currently catalogued. In other planetary orbits only nine Mars trojans, 28 Neptune trojans, two Uranus trojans, and a single Earth trojan, have been found to date. A temporary Venus trojan is also known. Numerical orbital dynamics stability simulations indicate that Saturn and Uranus probably do not have any primordial trojans.

The same arrangement can appear when the primary object is a planet and the secondary is one of its moons, whereby much smaller trojan moons can share its orbit. All known trojan moons are part of the Saturn system. Telesto and Calypso are trojans of Tethys, and Helene and Polydeuces of Dione.

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The Voyager Golden Records are two phonograph records that were included aboard both Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977. The records contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form who may find them. The records are a sort of time capsule.

The Voyager 1 probe is currently the farthest human-made object from Earth. Both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 have reached interstellar space, the region between stars where the galactic plasma is present. Like their predecessors Pioneer 10 and 11, which featured a simple plaque, both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched by NASA with a message aboard—a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate to extraterrestrials a story of the world of humans on Earth.

Voyager 1 was launched in 1977, passed the orbit of Pluto in 1990, and left the Solar System (in the sense of passing the termination shock) in November 2004. It is now in the Kuiper belt. In about 40,000 years, it and Voyager 2 will each come to within about 1.8 light-years of two separate stars: Voyager 1 will have approached star Gliese 445, located in the constellation Camelopardalis, and Voyager 2 will have approached star Ross 248, located in the constellation of Andromeda.

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A white hole is a bizarre cosmic object which is intensely bright, and from which matter gushes rather than disappears. In other words, it’s the exact opposite of a black hole. But unlike black holes, there’s no consensus about whether white holes exist, or how they’d be formed.

However, some theorists think that a combination of Einstein’s theory and quantum theory points to a new way of thinking about white holes. Instead of being the ‘exit’ from a wormhole, they may be a slow-motion replay of the formation of the original black hole.

The process starts when an old massive star collapses under its own weight and forms a black hole (see diagram, above). But then, quantum effects occurring around the surface of the black hole halt further collapse to a singularity, and instead begin to gradually turn the black hole into a white hole that’s spewing out the original star matter again. The process is mind-bendingly slow, though, so we may be in for a very long wait to find out if white holes really exist.

Credit : Science Focus

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McDowell, who is well known in the space community for his research on this topic, has argued that the Kármán line is not based in scientific reasoning. According to his analyses of historical data, Virgin Galactic is right—space begins about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the ground.

Neither Blue Origin nor Virgin Galactic can put people into orbit around Earth, but the nature of orbits provides a useful way to understand this problem. Imagine you’re a satellite traveling in an elongated orbit around Earth, and your closest approach brings you less than 50 or so miles from the ground. At that point, the atmosphere will assert its presence and drag you down into a fiery plunge. But if your approach takes you above 50 miles, “you will likely survive ’til the next orbit and go around,” McDowell said. At this boundary—which I’m calling the McDowell line—gravitational forces become more important than atmospheric ones.

There are a variety of reasons McDowell argues that 80 kilometers is the clearest boundary of space, such as the scientific measure of the Earth’s atmosphere, the gravitational physics, and the historical precedent — including that Hungarian-American engineer Theodore von Kármán’s original line was closer to 80 than 100.

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Did you know a host of creatures paved the way for human spaceflight? Fruit flies were the first to be sent up in 1947 and they were recovered alive. A couple of years later, Albert II, a rhesus monkey, made it to a height of 134 km, but a problem with the parachute led to his end on landing. Following Albert II, a number of monkeys were sent up but none survived. Their sacrifices helped scientists study the effects of weightlessness and radiation on living beings. The first monkeys to survive the flight into space to a height of over 550km were Able and Baker in 1959.

They flew to a height of 360 miles (580 km) on May 28, 1959 aboard a Jupiter rocket. Their capsule landed 1700 miles (2736 km) downrange from the Eastern Space Missile Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, and they were successfully recovered. To read more about this historic event, check out our story commemorating the 50th anniversary of the flight.

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Venus revolves or orbits around the Sun once every 0.615 Earth years, or once every 224.7 Earth days. Venus travels at an average speed of 78,341 miles per hour or 126,077 kilometers per hour in its orbit around the Sun.

The most likely explanations focus on fine particles, ice crystals, or even a chemical compound called iron chloride. Although it's much less likely, another possibility considered by scientists who study astrobiology is that these streaks could be made up of microbial life, Venus-style. Astrobiologists note that ring-shaped linkages of sulfur atoms, known to exist in Venus’ atmosphere, could provide microbes with a kind of coating that would protect them from sulfuric acid. These handy chemical cloaks would also absorb potentially damaging ultraviolet light and re-radiate it as visible light.

Some of the Russian Venera probes did, indeed, detect particles in Venus’ lower atmosphere about a micron in length – roughly the same size as a bacterium on Earth.

None of these findings provide compelling evidence for the existence of life in Venus’ clouds. But the questions they raise, along with Venus’ vanished ocean, its violently volcanic surface, and its hellish history, make a compelling case for a return to our temperamental sister planet. There is much, it would seem, that she can teach us.

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An inferior conjunction is when an object passes between us and the sun. Any object in space that orbits the sun closer than Earth’s orbit might pass through inferior conjunction from time to time, assuming its orbit lies more or less close to the ecliptic. Usually, though, when you hear the words inferior conjunction, astronomers are speaking of the planets Venus and Mercury, which orbit the sun inside Earth’s orbit. Astronomers sometimes refer to Venus and Mercury as inferior planets. When they’re at or near inferior conjunction, we can’t see them. They’re hidden in the sun’s glare. Occasionally, though, Venus or Mercury can be seen to transit across the sun’s disk at inferior conjunction. Consider also the moon. It passes between the Earth and sun at new moon once each month. Therefore, it would be correct, if a little weird, to say that the moon is at inferior conjunction when it’s at its new phase.

A superior conjunction is when an object passes behind the sun from our point of view. Think of Venus or Mercury again. Half of their conjunctions with the sun – when they are brought together with the sun on our sky’s dome – are inferior conjunctions, and half are superior conjunctions. It’s kind of fun to imagine them on an endless cycle of passing in front of the sun, as seen from Earth, then behind it, and back again, like watching squirrels running around a tree. Meanwhile, the superior planets – or planets farther from the sun than Earth such as Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune – can never be at inferior conjunction. They can never pass between us and the sun. Thus the superior planets only have superior conjunctions.

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