Exercise :: Science - Latest Current Affairs
- Science - Latest Current Affairs
| 1. | NASA's 'OSIRIS-REx' spacecraft's mission involves a close-up survey of the asteroid __________. |
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Answer: Option A Explanation: NASA's 'Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer' (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft arrived at the asteroid named 'Bennu' on 3rd December 2018. The spacecraft's mission involves a close-up survey of the asteroid Bennu. It is the part of NASA's New Frontiers Programme. 'OSIRIS-REx' was launched in September 2016.
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| 2. | India's heaviest communication satellite that is launched successfully from French Guiana. |
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Answer: Option C Explanation: ISRO's heaviest and most advanced high throughput communication satellite 'GSAT-11' was successfully launched by an European Ariane-5 vehicle (Flight VA246) rocket from Guiana Space Centre at Kourou in French Guiana. Initially, the satellite is placed in the Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) and will be raised to the Geostationary Orbit (36,000 km above the equator) through phase-wise orbit-raising manoeuvres in the days ahead, using its on-board propulsion systems. GSAT-11 will be positioned at 74-degree east longitude in the geostationary orbit.The mission of the 5,854-kg giant 'bird' is to provide high data rate connectivity to users of Indian mainland and islands through 32 user beams in Ku-band and 8 hub beams in Ka-band. It will boost the broadband connectivity to rural and inaccessible Gram Panchayats under BharatNet Project which is part of the Digital India initiative. The satellite is capable of providing high bandwidth connectivity with speeds of up to 16 gigabytes per second. GSAT-11' s co-passenger is South Korea's GEO-KOMPSAT-2A, a meteorology satellite.
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| 3. | How many small satellites are launched by SpaceX recently? |
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Answer: Option A Explanation: SpaceX successfully launched 64 small satellites, including India's ExseedSAT-1 in the company's largest-ever "rideshare" mission on a twice-reused Falcon 9 rocket that lifted off from a California launchpad. This is a new US record. The Falcon 9 rocket carried 15 micro-satellites and 49 CubeSats belonging to 34 different clients including public, private and university sources from 17 different countries across the world including South Korea, France and Kazakhstan.
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| 4. | Which of the following is the first manned mission to the International Space Station (ISS)? |
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Answer: Option A Explanation: After the October launch failure, a Soyuz rocket carrying Russian, American and Canadian astronauts took off from Kazakhstan and reached orbit on 3rd December in the first manned mission. Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, Anne McClain of NASA and David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency were launched off for a six-and-a-half month mission on the International Space Station (ISS). After the rocket lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Russian space agency Roscomos announced that the capsule was successfully launched into orbit.
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| 5. | Which of the following rocket is to be launched by NASA? |
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Answer: Option A Explanation: NASA is set to launch VISIONS-2 rocket to get a closer look at the how the earth's atmosphere is leaking into space. The VISIONS-2 mission, Visualizing Ion Outflow via Neutral Atom Sensing-2, is scheduled to be launched on December 4. Understanding atmospheric escape on earth has applications all over the Universe, from predicting which planets might be habitable, to piecing together how Mars became a desolate landscape. A sounding rocket makes brief, targeted flights into space before falling back to Earth just a few minutes later. Sounding rockets are unique among scientific spacecraft for their superior dexterity. They can be carted to remote locations, where they are aimed and shot into short-lived events, like the sudden formation of the aurora borealis, at a moment's notice. The aurora borealis is of keen interest to the VISIONS-2 team, but not just for its otherworldly glow. The aurora play are fundamental drivers in the process of atmospheric escape, whereby planets, including Earth, gradually leak their atmosphere into space.
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