My Science School

Agni I, India's first intermediate-range ballistic missile, was successfully test-fired for the first time in May 1989. It was inducted into service in 2004. It has a range capability between 700 and 900 kilometres.

Weighing 12 tonne with a length of 15 metres, Agni-1 has a range of 700–900 km and is capable of carrying a conventional payload of 1,000 kg (2,200 lb) or a nuclear warhead at a speed of 2.5 km/s. Agni missiles consist of one (short range) or two stages (intermediate range). These are rail and road mobile and powered by solid propellants. Agni-I is used by the Strategic Force Command (SFC) of the Indian Army. The latest missile test occurred on 13 July 2012, when India test fired Agni I successfully at Wheeler Island off Orissa coast. On 11 April 2014 the missile was test fired for the first time in a night trial exercise to its full range of 700 km from the Wheeler island off the Odisha coast. The missile randomly picked from production line was test fired by the Strategic Forces Command after 11 pm. This test was first night after 2 previous test failed due to technical glitches. The missile was test fired from a mobile launcher with logistics support from DRDO at the Integrated Test Range as part of the regular training exercise by the armed forces.

With a special weapons loadAgni-I can reach 1200 km. As compared to Agni-II, Agni-I is less costly, simple, accurate and more mobile. 

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Apollo 14 launched in the late afternoon of January 31, 1971 on what was to be our third trip to the lunar surface. Five days later Alan Shepard and Edgar Mitchell walked on the Moon while Stuart Roosa, a former U.S. Forest Service smoke jumper, orbited above in the command module. Packed in small containers in Roosa's personal kit were hundreds of tree seeds, part of a joint NASA/USFS project. Upon return to Earth, the seeds were germinated by the Forest Service. Known as the "Moon Trees", the resulting seedlings were planted throughout the United States (often as part of the nation's bicentennial in 1976) and the world. They stand as a tribute to astronaut Roosa and the Apollo program.

Stan Krugman collected the seeds and an attempt at germinating some of the seeds was made in Houston. Somewhat surprisingly, it proved successful and the seeds started growing, but they did not survive long because the facilities there were inadequate. A year later the remaining seeds were sent to the southern Forest Service station in Gulfport, Mississippi (sycamore, loblolly pine, and sweetgum) and to the western station in Placerville, California (redwood and Douglas fir) to attempt germination. Many of the seeds, and later cuttings, were successful and grew into viable seedlings. Some of these were planted with their Earth-bound counterparts as controls, (as might be expected, after over forty years there is no discernable difference) but most were given away in 1975 and 1976 to many state forestry organizations to be planted as part of the nation's bicentennial celebration. These trees were southern and western species, so not all states received trees. A loblolly pine was planted at the White House, and trees were planted in Brazil, Switzerland, and presented to the Emperor of Japan, among others. Trees have also been planted in Washington Square in Philadelphia, at Valley Forge, in the International Forest of Friendship, and at various universities and NASA centers. 

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The first vegetable grown and eaten on the International Space Station space was Outredgeous red romaine lettuce, in 2015. Bred by Frank Morton of Wild Garden Seed. 64 days to maturity on earth, 33 days in space, with intensely dark red, slightly ruffled leaves forming loose upright heads. 

The Veggie system was developed by Orbital Technologies Corp. (ORBITEC) in Madison, Wisconsin, and tested at Kennedy before flight. Veggie, along with two sets of pillows containing the romaine seeds and one set of zinnias, was delivered to the station on the third cargo resupply mission by SpaceX in April 2014.

The collapsible and expandable Veggie unit features a flat panel light bank that includes red, blue and green LEDs for plant growth and crew observation. Using LED lights to grow plants was an idea that originated with NASA as far back as the late 1990s, according to Dr. Ray Wheeler, lead for Advanced Life Support activities in the Exploration Research and Technology Programs Office at Kennedy.

Wheeler worked with engineers and collaborators to help develop the Veggie unit from a Small Business Innovative Research project with ORBITEC. Dr. Gioia Massa is the NASA payload scientist for Veggie at Kennedy. Massa and others worked to get the flight unit developed and certified for use on the space station. The purple/pinkish hue surrounding the plants in Veggie is the result of a combination of the red and blue lights, which by design emit more light than the green LEDs. Green LEDS were added so the plants look like edible food rather than weird purple plants.

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In 1982, the crew of the Soviet Salyut 7 space station conducted an experiment, prepared by Lithuanian scientists (Alfonsas Merkys and others), and grew some Arabidopsis using Fiton-3 experimental micro-greenhouse apparatus, thus becoming the first plants to flower and produce seeds in space.

Plant research continued on the International Space Station. Biomass Production System was used on the ISS Expedition 4. The Vegetable Production System (Veggie) system was later used aboard ISS. Plants tested in Veggie before going into space included lettuce, Swiss chard, radishes, Chinese cabbage and peas. Red Romaine lettuce was grown in space on Expedition 40 which were harvested when mature, frozen and tested back on Earth. Expedition 44 members became the first American astronauts to eat plants grown in space on 10 August 2015, when their crop of Red Romaine was harvested. Since 2003 Russian cosmonauts have been eating half of their crop while the other half goes towards further research. In 2012, a sunflower bloomed aboard the ISS under the care of NASA astronaut Donald Pettit. In January 2016, US astronauts announced that a zinnia had blossomed aboard the ISS.

In 2017 the Advanced Plant Habitat was designed for ISS, which was a nearly self-sustaining plant growth system for that space station in low Earth orbit. The system is installed in parallel with another plant grown system aboard the station, VEGGIE, and a major difference with that system is that APH is designed to need less upkeep by humans. APH is supported by the Plant Habitat Avionics Real-Time Manager. Some plants that were to be tested in APH include Dwarf Wheat and Arabidopsis. In December 2017 hundreds of seeds were delivered to ISS for growth in the VEGGIE system.

In 2018 the Veggie-3 experiment at the ISS, was tested with plant pillows and root mats. One of the goals is to grow food for crew consumption. Crops tested at this time include cabbage, lettuce, and mizuna. In 2018, the PONDS system for nutrient deliver in microgravity was tested.

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Plant Habitat (APH) abroad the International Space Station in 2020?

NASA astronaut Kate Rubins harvested fresh radishes grown in space, opening new doors for producing food in microgravity to sustain future longer-term missions to the moon and Mars.

The radishes were grown in the Advanced Plant Habitat (APH) aboard the International Space Station. NASA shared a time-lapse video of the radishes as they grew inside the APH over the course of 27 days. 

Radishes are the latest type of fresh produce to be successfully grown and harvested in microgravity, and were chosen for the Plant Habitat-02 (PH-02) experiment because the vegetable is well understood by scientists and reaches maturity in just 27 days. 

Radishes are also a viable test plant for future longer-term missions because they are edible and nutritious. The vegetable is genetically similar to Arabidopsis, which is a small flowering plant related to cabbage that has been studied frequently in microgravity, according to the NASA statement. 

Credit : Space.com

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Rosalind Franklin is an English chemist, best known for her role in the discovery of the structure of DNA, a constituent of chromosomes that serves to encode genetic information. Her work on the X-ray diffraction images of DNA, particularly Photo 51, led to the discovery of the double helix shape of DNA. Since Nobel Committee does not recognise work posthumously, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962 went to Francis Crick, James Watson, and Maurice Wilkins, who based their work on her data.

Rosalind was a topper and an all-rounder in school. Her interests were in maths, sports and languages. Born to a prominent British Jewish family in 1920, Franklin studied the Natural Sciences Tripos at Newnham College, Cambridge, from which she graduated in 1941. She joined the University of Cambridge physical chemistry laboratory as a research fellow. Since this was during World War II, she worked on the porousity of coal for fuel purposes and other wartime devices

After finishing her work on DNA, Franklin led pioneering work at Birkbeck, University of London, on the molecular structures of the Tobacco Mosaic virus (TMV), an RNA virus that infects tobacco plants. Her work provided new insights into the structure of viruses.

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What you need:

A small balloon (bigger ones won't inflate much), an empty plastic water bottle (the larger the better; use a 1.25 or 2-litre one), two bowls, Hot water (not necessarily boiling hot), Ice water

What to do:

1. Fill one bowl with hot water and the other with ice water. Make sure you don't fill them to the brim.

2. Uncap the bottle and cover its mouth with the balloon.

3. First, put the bottom of the bottle in the bowl with the hot water. Hold it in there for 30 to 40 seconds. Watch what happens to the balloon.

4. Now, transfer the bottle into the bowl of cold water. Hold it there for 30 to 40 seconds too.

What happens?

When the bottle is placed in the hot water, the balloon slowly inflates! It stays inflated for a bit even after it is removed.

Once the bottle is in the cold water bowl, the balloon deflates.

Why?

The bottle is full of air. When it is placed in the hot water, the air molecules inside the bottle heat up. This causes the air to expand, which means the air molecules start spreading out and taking up more space. That's how they move into the balloon causing it to inflate.

Similarly, cold water cools down the air in the bottle. Once the air cools, it starts contracting, which means its molecules start moving back close to each other.

Thus, they no longer need the extra space in the balloon. The air moves back into the bottle and the balloon deflates.

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What you need:

Cardboard, Pencil, Scissors, Food colouring, Liquid fabric Whitener (Found in general stores), Ammonia (found in the cleaning section of stores), Salt, Water, A dish.

What to do:

1. Draw two Christmas tree shapes on cardboard and cut them out.

2. Cut a slot at the top of one shape, up to its middle. Cut a slot in the second shape from the bottom to the middle. Now join both shapes using these slots so you get a tree that can stand on its own.

3. Add drops of food colouring to the edges of the tree.

4. Now, in the dish, mix one tablespoon of water, one tablespoon of salt, one tablespoon fabric whitener and half a tablespoon of ammonia.

5. Stand the tree in the middle of the dish, in the mixture. Leave it for 10 to 12 hours. You can keep monitoring it.

What happens?

The branches of your tree soon begin to look snowy. And gradually, you have a colourful, snowy tree.

Why?

First, there's capillary action, which is the movement of a liquid against gravity, through narrow spaces. This is the same principle that allows water to be absorbed by a tree's roots and transported to its leaves. The cardboard absorbs the solution until it is full of the liquid. Once this happens, the liquid begins to evaporate.

Ammonia evaporates more quickly than water and it acts as an accelerating agent for the evaporation. As the liquid leaves, crystals are left behind on the cardboard. These crystals are a combination of the salt and the fabric whitener. As more liquid evaporates more of these crystals are left behind and soon you have a tree!

Note that different brands of whiteners may affect your experiment differently. Be ready for some trial and error.

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What you need:

A balloon, A CD or DVD, Strong glue, Pop-top cap from a liquid soap bottle or water bottle, Tape, Drawing pin.

What to do:

1. Cover the centre hole of the disc with the tape. Poke 5-6 holes in it using the pin.

2. Use the glue to stick the pop-top cap over the centre of the disc. Let it dry.

3. Close the pop-top cap. Now, blow the balloon, and without letting the air escape, fit its mouth over the cap.

4. Place the disc on a table and push it. Does it go far?

5. Now, pop the cap open and then push the disc.

What happens?

When you haven't popped the cap open, the disc does not go far. But once the cap is popped open, the disc actually skims over the table until the balloon deflates. Why?

When the cap is popped open, air begins to flow out of the balloon, under the CD. The disc is light enough to be lifted by this air flow. This creates a cushion of air between the surfaces of the disc and the table, reducing friction. Once the balloon deflates, the hover-loon' is out of air and the disc stops.

Friction is the force that was bringing the disc to a halt when the cap was un-popped.

Hovercrafts operate on the same principle of reducing friction by employing air cushioning. To get a smoothly floating device, make sure your disc is not warped or cracked. There should be no holes, apart from the ones in the tape, that allow the air to escape. Also, the table or the floor needs to be smooth and without obstacles.

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What you need:

A disposable cup (made of styrofoam), A drawing pin, Water, A tub.

What to do:

1. Use the pin to poke two holes on the sides of the cup. The holes should be exactly opposite to each other, about an inch from the cup's base.

2. Block those holes with your finger and thumb. Then fill the cup with water.

3. Hold the glass over the empty tub. Unplug the holes. What happens? The water leaks out, doesn't it?

4. Now, cover the holes again. Refill the cup.

5. Hold the cup high above the tub and let it go. Watch the holes carefully.

What happens?

As the cup free-falls into the tub, no water leaks out of the holes! But just as soon as the cup reaches the tub, the water spills from its mouth (obviously) and from the holes. Why?

It's all gravity! When you first unplugged the holes while holding the cup stationary, water began to leak out and fall down because of gravity. This was the easiest route for the water to move towards the earth that was pulling it.

When you let the cup fall, the cup and the water inside it were falling downwards at the same speed. That's why the water, instead of spilling outwards, moved down with the cup. Water didn't need an easier path to get to the earth since it was already doing that inside the cup. Once it reached the tub, it began to flow out once again, trying to go down.

Something similar would happen if you were inside an elevator with its cable cut off. It would be free-falling down and you would be going down with it without actually falling to the elevators floor. That's because you and the elevator are moving at the same speed. Once you hit the ground, well, that's another story.

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If you thought disability restrains one from travelling to space, a happening place these days, think again. To make space travel inclusive, the European Space Agency hopes to hire and launch the world's first physically challenged astronaut. Several hundred would-be para-astronauts have already applied for the job, says ESA chief Josef Aschbacher. What is it all about? Let's find out.

The European Space Agency, abbreviated as ESA, is Europe's comprehensive space agency. Established in 1975, it is an intergovernmental organisation comprising 22 member States. Dedicated to exploration and use of space for the benefit of people, the agency has promoted the European countries' interests in space for over four decades. It provides independent access to space for scientific and commercial missions through Europe's spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

Its Ariane rocket once dominated the market for commercial satellite launches. But now, from flying cargo missions and sending astronauts to the International Space Station to undertaking suborbital flights with the aim of leveraging space tourism, private players such as SpaceX are posing stiff competition. Space, which was once the preserve of public agencies such as ESA and NASA, is now open to all for exploration.

First-ever attempt

It's no mean task to go to space - astronaut candidates must complete months of intensive training and preparation to survive in the hostile space environment. A physical disability would normally prevent candidates from being selected to fly to space due to requirements imposed by current space hardware. In a first-ever attempt, the ESA has announced plans to launch an astronaut with a disability. The ESA's "Parastronaut feasibility project seeks to clear the path to space for astronauts with disabilities. It aims at offering them professional spaceflight opportunities. As part of the project, ESA plans to develop necessary technologies to enable these professionals to serve as crew members.

The way forward

According to Aschbacher, the ESA's recruitment ad for new astronauts has attracted a whopping 22,000 applicants. Among them are over 250 candidates with disabilities. After several rounds of selection process, six applicants will be able to join the existing ESA astronaut corps by the end of 2022.

The parastronaut project will provide an opportunity of flight to one or more individuals. Under the project, the selected candidate(s) will get to work with the agency to help assess the conditions that allow people with disabilities to operate in space. While educational and psychological requirements for these candidates are the same as those for the agency's astronaut selection, physical disabilities such as a lower limb deficiency, a marked difference in leg length and a short stature are allowed. It is said that after arriving at an understanding of the potential challenges regarding safety and operations for such people, the scope of disabilities may be widened to ensure a broader inclusion.

Quick facts

• The current group of ESA astronauts include French Thomas Pesquet, Italians Samantha Cristoforetti and Luca Parmitano, Germans Alexander Gerst and Matthias Maurer, Danish Andreas Mogensen, and Briton Timothy Peake.
• The ESA's previous recruitment for astronauts took place in 2008.

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In the United States, professional, military, and commercial astronauts who travel above an altitude of 50 miles (80 km) are awarded astronaut wings.

A professional space traveler is called an astronaut. The first known use of the term "astronaut" in the modern sense was by Neil R. Jones in his 1930 short story "The Death's Head Meteor". The word itself had been known earlier; for example, in Percy Greg's 1880 book Across the Zodiac, "astronaut" referred to a spacecraft. In Les Navigateurs de l'Infini (1925) by J.-H. Rosny aîné, the word astronautique (astronautic) was used. The word may have been inspired by "aeronaut", an older term for an air traveler first applied in 1784 to balloonists. An early use of "astronaut" in a non-fiction publication is Eric Frank Russell's poem "The Astronaut", appearing in the November 1934 Bulletin of the British Interplanetary Society.

The first known formal use of the term astronautics in the scientific community was the establishment of the annual International Astronautical Congress in 1950, and the subsequent founding of the International Astronautical Federation the following year.

NASA applies the term astronaut to any crew member aboard NASA spacecraft bound for Earth orbit or beyond. NASA also uses the term as a title for those selected to join its Astronaut Corps. The European Space Agency similarly uses the term astronaut for members of its Astronaut Corps.

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On April 30, 2001, US millionaire Dennis Tito arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) via a Russian Soyuz rocket, becoming the world's first space tourist.

In a project first arranged by MirCorp, Tito was accepted by the Russian Federal Space Agency as a candidate for a commercial spaceflight. Tito met criticism from NASA before the launch, primarily from Daniel Goldin, at that time the Administrator of NASA, who considered it inappropriate for a tourist to take a ride into space. MirCorp, Goldin and Tito are profiled in the documentary film Orphans of Apollo. When Tito arrived at the Johnson Space Center for additional training on the American portion of the ISS, Robert D. Cabana, NASA manager, sent Tito and his two fellow cosmonauts home, stating, "...We will not be able to begin training, because we are not willing to train with Dennis Tito."

Later, through an arrangement with space tourism company Space Adventures, Ltd., Tito joined the Soyuz TM-32 mission which launched on April 28, 2001. The spacecraft docked with the International Space Station. Tito and his fellow cosmonauts spent 7 days, 22 hours, 4 minutes in space and orbited the Earth 128 times. Tito performed several scientific experiments in orbit that he said would be useful for his company and business.Tito paid a reported $20 million for his trip.

Since returning from space, he has testified at the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation, Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Space and the House Committee on Science, Subcommittee on Space & Aeronautics Joint Hearing on "Commercial Human Spaceflight" on July 24, 2003. Ten years after his flight, he gave an interview to BBC News about it.

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Parasaurolophus is a hadrosaurid (sometimes referred to as the hadrosaurs or duck-billed dinosaurs) from approximately 76.5–73 million years ago (late Cretaceous). It is a herd animal feeding on the park’s rich vegetation. The most stunning feature of the Parasaurolophus is the crest on its head

Parasaurolophus was a hadrosaurid, part of a diverse family of Cretaceous dinosaurs known for their range of bizarre head adornments. This genus is known for its large, elaborate cranial crest, which at its largest forms a long curved tube projecting upwards and back from the skull. Charonosaurus from China, which may have been its closest relative, had a similar skull and potentially a similar crest. Visual recognition of both species and sex, acoustic resonance, and thermoregulation have been proposed as functional explanations for the crest. It is one of the rarer hadrosaurids, known from only a handful of good specimens.

The most noticeable feature was the cranial crest, which protruded from the rear of the head and was made up of the premaxilla and nasal bones. The crest was hollow, with distinct tubes leading from each nostril to the end of the crest before reversing direction and heading back down the crest and into the skull. The tubes were simplest in P. walkeri, and more complex in P. tubicen, where some tubes were blind and others met and separated. While P. walkeri and P. tubicen had long crests with only slight curvature, P. cyrtocristatus had a short crest with a more circular profile.

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Stegosaurus was a plated dinosaur that lived in North America during the Late Jurassic Period. It had a bulky body with a high, arched back and pillar-like limbs.

The skull and brain of Stegosaurus were especially small for such a large animal. Its narrow head measured only 16 inches (40 centimeters) long. There once was a mistaken belief that this dinosaur had two brains because the sacrum region of the spinal cord was actually larger than its brain cavity. Recent theories suggest, however, that the sacrum region may have been used to store glycogen, which contains carbohydrates, as it does in several modern animals.

The most striking feature of Stegosaurus was the enormous triangular-shaped line of plates along its spine. Each horn-covered, bony plate stood more than 2 feet (60 centimeters) tall. Each individual plate of every dinosaur had its own distinctive size and shape; no two were alike. There has been much debate among paleontologists as to the function of these plates. The alternating positions of the structures, which also contained several blood vessels, have led some paleontologists to believe that they were used for thermoregulation—that is, to help the dinosaur control its body temperature. They could either act as solar panels to soak up the warmth of the sun, or they could help the animal to release excess body heat into the atmosphere. Other paleontologists believe that Stegosaurus used its plates for species recognition and for display purposes during the breeding season. One very likely function of these plates was to provide Stegosaurus with protection from predators such as Allosaurus. This unique feature inspired the name Stegosaurus, which means “covered lizard,” or “roof lizard.”

Credit : Britannica

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