NASA Spacecraft Discovers The Crash Landing Site Of Chandrayaan – 2 Vikram Lander
This first news in this version of tectonics has a very special significance for our Indian audience.
An orbital spacecraft from NASA just discovered the crash site of India’s Chandrayaan-2 mission.
The Indian lunar lander Vikram crashed on to the Moon’s surface in a landing attempt that took place in September.
The image data received indicate it very clearly that the lunar Lander met an explosive end, and the image also reveals the impact site and the debris that was created thereof.
Vikram as a part of Chandrayaan-2 Mission was supposed to be India’s first spacecraft to gently touch down the lunar surface.
The Vikram lander housed in itself a Rover called Pragyan, which would have provided even more comprehensive details about the lunar surface.
Unfortunately, when Vikram Lander was just 2.1 kilometres above the lunar surface the orbiter lost contact with Vikram lander owing to technical mishap.
Afterwards what exactly happened with the Vikram Lander was not clear and it was speculated that it indeed crashed onto the moon surface.
The images revealed by NASA actually indicate that this is what precisely happened.
The images show not only the exact spot where the Vikram lander crashed but also the debris generated as a result of the crash.
Although, the news almost confirms that the chances to revive Vikram and Rover are bleak but this is not something to be disheartened about.
Space is an uncharted terrain and will almost always have that uncertainty factor owing to the shear number of variables involved in undertaking a project as sensitive as the Chandrayaan 2.
Now that isn’t to say that Chandrayaan 2 was a failure. The majority of lunar data will still be transmitted via the orbiter and only the data extensions won’t be received as a result of the crash.
Success and failures are words used by stupid minds. This life is a process and everything that one may personally regard as success or failure is just their idea.
India has taken it’s first inertial step to space exploration and in times to come potential space projects are coming.
I know we all are sure of that.
European Space Agency Approved It’s Side For Asteroid Deflection Program
Since we are on the talk of space. Let’s talk space faring a bit more.
European Space Agency or ESA just approved its side for the project AIDA (Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment) that aims at studying the deflection patterns of asteroids maneuvering close to earth.
The project is a consequence of the increasing concern for planetary defense which may potentially be able to take a course of action if an asteroid starts on a trajectory that may potentially strike Earth.
Very sci-fi project in my opinion.
The asteroid impact and deflection assessment or AIDA comprises of two arms.
One from NASA called DART (Double Asteroid Deflection Test) and the European Space Agenciy’s HERA.
The combined budget will be allocated to study the effectiveness of an impact onto the asteroid to ward off an impending strike on Earth.
As a part of this mission NASA’s DART will travel to a double asteroid system called Didymos.
The spacecraft will slam into the asteroid system at a speed of about 6 kilometres per second.
The resultant impact on the asteroid will be studied in order to come up with technological capacities to deflect similar asteroid systems that have a potential to strike Earth.
I am just waiting for the day when when we can build space capacity to harness natural resources from asteroids.
Intel and MediaTek Partnership To Bring 5G To PC & Laptops
So this is one news from Intel side that isn’t involving how AMD is bashing Intel left and right.
In a previous segment of TechTonics, we discussed how Intel cancelled its 5G modem building plans.
Right now we are hearing news that Intel is looking to partner up with the system on chip vendor MediaTek to build a hardware that can be incorporated in PC’s and laptops.
The functional dimensions of the partnership involves Intel setting up 5G standards and specifications and MediaTek Developing the hardware.
The validation and end optimization will again be taken care of by Intel.
Intel will also put its marketing and integration team to convince various OEMs to adopt to its new hardware.
This also implies that Intel will be writing OS level drivers for the 5G modems.
This partnership has a special significance owing to the fact that Intel has been facing a lot of resistance in getting out its 10 nm hardware into the market.
So bringing out this PC centric hardware in partnership with MediaTek can be a conduit through which Intel keeps its hardware game flowing in the mean time.
MediaTek on the other hand will find so many things to learn from Intel given it intense software development activities and integration with various OEM vendors in the PC market.
5G is one of the most important technologies emerging rapidly in the communications sector.
Let’s see how it shapes up our PC and laptops.
Facebook Developing Tool To Transfer Photos To Other Apps
Facebook like always has been making a lot of news lately.
Right from the point where Mark Zuckerberg’s gave a speech on freedom of speech at Georgetown University, we have been seeing Facebook make a lot of news.
Check It Out.
Now we are receiving this news that Facebook is working on a tool that will allow the photos that you have uploaded to Facebook to be transferred to other apps such as Google photos.
In a blog post, Facebook pointed out how you will now be able to photos to other apps and cloud services.
This as per Facebook is a step taken to drive innovation into data portability and platform independence.
In light to all the privacy concerns that have been coming up and Facebook being at the cross hairs of government institutions across the world, this seems quite intriguing.
People are invariably looking at the whole privacy context questioning whether this is an innovation towards data portability or just reducing one’s baggage in privacy concerns.
Well, it’s not up to us to judge.
As far as privacy problems go, in the world we are living in nothing is private and that’s a fact.
But what people do not attest to is probing without permission. Take all the data you want, just don’t take it without my permission is what people shout unanimously.
And No a small line in a big paragraph that has an “I agree” button on the bottom isn’t going to cut it.
AWS Finally Launches Its Quantum Computing Service
If I have to choose emerging technologies that are trying to make headway in this new world.
I will have to pick AI, Machine Learning, Big Data and Quantum computing.
While it is true that the tech giants like Google, Microsoft and IBM have been very vocal about their investments in quantum computing.
Amazon almost always kept mum.
But it seems like all of that is going to change because Amazon Web Services just announced the launch of Braket as it’s step into quantum computing.
Understand that AWS is not planning to create its own Quantum computer.
On the contrary,its partnering with Ion-Q and Riggeti to make their systems available through its clouds.
In addition to this introduction AWS is also launching its own AWS Center for Quantum Computing and Quantum Solutions Lab.
With the help of Braket, developers can get a kick start on building their own Quantum computing algorithms and basic apps.
These algorithms and apps can then be tested and simulated on AWS and Quantum hardware from its partners.
This will allow developers and researchers to get access to all the quantum resources via single interface which will allow them to figure out what works best for them.
This step can be seen as an effort by Amazon to bring in collaborate various resources associated with Quantum Computing to speed things up as far as research associated with Quantum computing goes.
Alright I hope you learned something new today with this edition of techtonics.
As always, do not worry for all of you who like to have all this news in video form I will be appending a YouTube video too along with this post.
You are indeed a legend if you read this post before the video went live.
email me “Hi” and how you found out about yantraas and me and maybe I will mention your name in the video, the TechTonics one or the next one.
Till that that time take great care of yourselves and I am going to see you very very soon.
Namaskaram 🙂 _/\_
