SpaceX's Grasshopper successfully takes a leap towards reusability!

SpaceX’s dreams of creating a fully reusable launch vehicle is getting closer to fulfillment via the third test of their test vehicle - Grasshopper. The third and the most ambitious test of the vehicle took place on December 17,2012 when the Grasshopper took a 40 meter leap into the skies at their test facility in Texas – followed by a stable hover and smooth landing – was conducted without a hitch. The first two tests were conducted in September when the Grasshopper flew to 1.8 meters (6 feet), and in November, when it flew to 5.4 meters (17.7 feet/2 stories) including a brief hover.  

Grasshopper, SpaceX's vertical takeoff and landing vehicle (VTVL), rose 131 feet (40 meters), hovered and landed safely on the pad using closed loop thrust vector and throttle control. The total test duration was 29 seconds. There are the videos:

Single Camera Grasshopper Test flight video 17/12/2012: 

Multi- Angle Grasshopper Test flight video 17/12/2012:

The Grasshopper – consisting of a Falcon 9 rocket first stage, Merlin 1D engine, four steel landing legs with hydraulic dampers, and a steel support structure. The plan revolves around a modified version of the Falcon 9 launch vehicle design, creating a version of the flyback booster concept – one where all of the vehicle’s components return back to Earth for reuse. SpaceX founder and chief executive, Elan Musk talked about these plans, "This is a very difficult thing to do. Even for an expendable launch vehicle, where you don’t attempt any recovery, you only get maybe two to three percent of your lift-off weight to orbit. That’s not a lot of room for error. Now you say ‘OK, now let’s make it reusable’. You have to strengthen the stages, add a lot of weight, a lot of thermal protection – a lot of things that add weight to that vehicle – and still have a useful payload to orbit. You’ve got to add all that’s necessary to bring the stages back to the launch pad to be able to re-fly them and still have useful payload to orbit."

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Science Fact - 8

Did you know that astronauts cannot belch. This is because there is no gravity to separate liquid from the gas  in their stomachs.

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Doha Climate Gateway: Extended Kyoto Protocol

The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP18) which extended for two weeks in Doha, finally came to an end with the favorable result. 194 countries have agreed to implement the second phase of Kyoto Protocol which is initiating from 2013 to 2020. The Doha round of talks mark the beginning of a transition to a new global climate change regime that will come into effect from 2020 and include within its ambit all countries.

The talks in Doha have agreed that the last 20 years intended to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to climate change were not much of a success. The Kyoto Protocol, the only existing and binding agreement which developed countries commit to cutting greenhouse gases, has been amended so that it will continue as of 1 January 2013. The first commitment period ends on 31 December 2012. The length of the second commitment period will be eight years.

The outcome came 24 hours after the negotiations were supposed to close because of countries like Poland, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus demanding use of the extra credit that had been given to them in the first phase. Doha Climate Gateway, the outcome of these two week long conference is being described as "historic" by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary Christiana Figueres. She said, "Now, there is much work to do. Doha is another step in the right direction, but we still have a long road ahead. The door to stay below two degrees remains barely open. The science shows it, the data proves it. The UN Climate Change negotiations must now focus on the concrete ways and means to accelerate action and ambition. The world has the money and technology to stay below two degrees. After Doha, it is a matter of scale, speed, determination and sticking to the timetable."

In order to achieve this, countries will hold meetings and workshops next year to prepare the new agreement and to further ways to raise ambition; to submit information, views and proposals on actions, initiatives and options to enhance ambition to the UN Climate Change Secretariat, by 1 March 2013; and that elements of a negotiating text are to be available no later than the end of 2014, so that a draft negotiating text is available before May 2015.

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Science Fact - 7

The Orangutan is the largest tree-dwelling mammal in the world.

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Science Fact - 6

The Stegosaurus dinosaur measured up to 30 feet (9.1 meters) long but had a brain the size of a walnut.

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Second-largest black hole found in NGC 1277

Astronomers have found a giant black hole in a tiny galaxy, which is quite opposite of the general belief of scientists that the size of the black hole is perpendicular to the size of the galaxy it is present in. Our own galaxy, Milky Way, also hosts a black hole in the centre of the galaxy named Sagittarius A. The galaxy, NGC 1277, is one-fourth the size of our galaxy but hosts a black hole 4000 times the size of the Sagittarius A. This is the second-heaviest black hole ever discovered whose mass is 17 billion times of our Sun.

The black holes cannot be measured for size because they cannot be seen. This is because they absorb all the light reflected at them and thus their size is measured by their sphere of influence. The sphere of influence measures the gravitational effect the black hole has on its surrounding stars and gases. 

Remco van den Bosch and his colleagues at University of Texas have found that some of the largest black holes are found in the small galaxies. NGC 1277 is one of these small galaxies in the constellation Perseus, which is 220 million light years away from our galaxy. It's black hole is as large as our Solar System and it contains 14% mass of the entire galaxy. Dr Van den Bosch said, "The only way to you can actually make those high dispersions in the centre is by having that really big black hole, there's really no other way around it."

With the help of NGC 1277's black hole, astronomers are now trying to advance their theories about the evolution of black holes and the relation between their size and the galaxy's size they are present in.

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Science Fact - 5

Flea's can jump 130 times higher than their own height. In human terms, this is equal to a 6 feet person jumping 780 feet into the air.

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Science Fact - 4

The deepest part of the world's oceans is the Mariana Trench. It is located in the western Pacific Ocean. to the east of Mariana Islands. 

It reaches a maximum depth of 10.911 km (with a variation of 40 m) at the Challenger Deep, a small valley in its floor.

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Science Fact - 3

The tallest tree ever measured in the world was a Eucalyptus tree in Australian forests. 

In 1872, forester William Feguson spotted an extremely tall mountain ash (Eucalyptus regnans) near the Watts River, Victoria, Australia. The tree was reported to be 132.6 m in height, i.e., 435 feet.

 

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Science fact - 2

When Krakatoa erupted in 1883, its force was so great that it could be heard 4,800 kilometers away in Australia.

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Iris Scanning as Biometric!

After the recent reports about being used as UID (Unique Identification Card), iris scanning is again in news these days. A computer scientist from texas State university- San Marco, Oleg Komogortsev, is trying to develop a biometric system which can identify people by thier scanned iris and the way they move their eyes. Biometric systems are a way of identifying people based on their unique features like fingerprints, etc. Computer scientists all over the world are studying biometrics for solving crime, border security, and just as a high-tech way to sign into smartphones, tablets and other devices.

Komogortsev explains, "When looking at a picture, different people will move their eyes among points of interest in different sequences. Even if two people trace the same paths, the exact way  they move their eyes differs. We are seeing there are enough differences so we can talk about this as a biometric."

This use of iris scanning as a tool of identifying people is not new. Way back in 1987, two scientists named Leonard Flom and Aran Safir were issued a first of its kind, broad patent entitled "Iris Recognition Technology". This initiated the rise of iris scanning but criminals have been able to fool the technology with printed contacts, or by holding up a high-quality printout of the correct person's eye in front of the scanner. Thus, Komogortsev hopes adding an eye-movement sensor could prevent this type of counterfeiting.

Komogortsev's system proposes to record eye movements and analyzes two features. The first feature which the system measures is the "fixations", that is, the times when people linger their gaze over a point on the screen. The second feature is the "saccades", that is, the swift movements the eye makes when it flies between points. Thus, by comparing the iris scans, the fixations and the saccades, the system will be able to "calculate unique properties about people's eyes, including the force their eye muscles use and other prperties about the fat and flesh around the eye and the eyeball itself", the researcher explained.

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Science Fact - 1

The total length of the blood vessels in a human body is 62,000 miles. If these are laid end to end, they would circle the Earth two and a half times!

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