RISAT

The Indian Space Research Organization successfully launched a revolutionary spy satellite that will help security agencies monitor the hundreds of mountain valleys that connect India with Pakistan and terrorist hideouts in Afghanistan further north.

The PSLV-C12, carrying the 300-kg spy satellite Radar Imaging Satellite (RISAT-2) and the 40-kg Micro Satellite ANUSAT lifted off from ISRO's Satish Dhawan space Centre.

At the end of a 48-hour countdown, the 44-meter tall four-stage PSLV-C12 blasted off from the second launch pad with the ignition of the core first stage.

The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, weighing 230 tonnes at the time of launch, soared into a clear sky at 0645 hrs IST from the spaceport, about 90 km north of Chennai.

This is the 15th flight of ISRO's workhorse PSLV, which had launched 30 satellites (14 for India and 16 for foreign countries) into a variety of orbits since 1993.

While the RISAT-2 has an all weather capability to take images of Earth, ANUSAT is the first student-made satellite built by an Indian University to demonstrate the technologies related to message store and forward operations.

What’s RISAT?

Designed by the Israeli Aerospace Industries, RISAT can take images through the thickest cloud cover, rain, snow or fog conditions during night and day.

While the RISAT will be used extensively for purposes like mapping, managing natural disasters and surveying the seas, it can also see through camouflage like cloth or foliage used to conceal camps or vehicles.

RISAT will enable India to keep a watch on terror camps, military installations across boundaries, missile sites and suchlike.



However, RISAT is not India's first spy satellite. The Technology Experiment Satellite has been used for photo-reconnaissance since 2001.

But unlike previous remote sensing satellites, RISAT is the first with a synthetic aperture radar, which gives it a day-night, all-weather snooping capability




It should also help keep track of ships at sea that could pose a threat.

The RISAT will reduce India's dependence on foreign suppliers like Ikonos for satellite imagery. But many more gaps need to be plugged. Despite the desperate need, India is still awaiting a dedicated military satellite.

Memory at his Fingers...

A Finnish computer engineer who lost one of his fingers in a motorcycle accident has come up with a novel use for his prosthetic finger--as a USB memory stick.

Jerry Jalava, 24, lost most of his finger after his motorbike collided with a deer on his way home from work last May. Half of his left ring finger had to be amputated.

Doctors thought he might have problems working with half his finger removed but while waiting for his new prosthetic, Jalava found it was easier to use the keyboard without the prosthetic so started joking with his friends about uses for half a finger.

"We started planning a lot of things with it. Then I found a tiny USB and after that I knew exactly that is the thing I want on my finger," Jalava told Reuters Television.

"First when people saw it they got really horrified, they just couldn't take it as a joke, so usually they needed a little time before laughing and understanding that this is a really funny solution."

Jalava accesses the memory stick by peeling back the nail on the prosthetic finger and uses it to store photos and various computer programmes.

The finger is not permanently attached to his hand, which means that it can be left plugged into the USB slot on his computer--and that has happened to him. "The concept of leaving your finger at work is just not everyday," he laughed.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 Releasing Finally!!

After two beta tests and a soft release, Microsoft Corp. is all set to officially launch its latest Internet browser on Thursday night.

The company will launch Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) at 2130 hrs IST, an official statement said.

Microsoft, whose share in the browser market took a beating with the emergence of rivals like Mozilla's Firefox, Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari, is aiming to regain its lost ground with the new browser.

Microsoft's market share dropped to about 67 percent last month as compared to over 90 percent three years ago.

IE8 can be freely downloaded in 25 languages from Microsoft's website, the company said.

The browser will include features like "accelerators," which allow users to highlight text on a website and choose from a variety of functions, including search engines, language translation or map displays and ‘InPrivate View’ wherein users will be able to browse without leaving any traces like history or cookies behind.

IE, being bundled as the default browser of the Windows Operating system, has helped the company achieve the strong market share it now enjoys. However, Microsoft has been in the dock for the same.



European regulators said in January that Microsoft was in breach of anti-trust rules by bundling IE with its Windows operating system.

Meanwhile, rumours have also surfaced in the blogs that this might be the last version of IE Microsoft will release before pulling the plug on its browser business.



Microsoft has not made any plans public about its browser development beyond IE8, but maintains that it is committed to the browser business.

BSNL Launches 3G Services in 11 Cities

India's No. 4 mobile operator, state-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), said on Friday it had launched third-generation (3G) services in 11 cities and planned to expand services to other areas in the country.

BSNL said in a statement it had invested 27 billion rupees ($530 million) on rolling out 3G infrastructure and would cover all district headquarters and important commercial towns.

India will hold an auction of 3G spectrum later this year, but state-run firms have already been given one slot in each service area, and will have to match the highest bid from private operators. Third-generation services give users a chance to enjoy fast Internet access, games and a host of multimedia content from maps to music on their cellphones. BSNL provides telecoms services across the country except in the major cities of New Delhi and Mumbai, which are covered by another state-run firm, MTNL.

Microsoft's KUMO

Microsoft Corp is internally testing a new version of its online search service under the name of Kumo.com, a spokesman for the software company said on Monday.

The service is not yet available outside the company, but may eventually form part of Microsoft's attempt to catch up with Internet search leaders Google Inc and Yahoo Inc.

The new search service was unveiled in an internal memo sent by the head of research at the company's online services division on Monday, but it did not go into details about features on the new service.

GMAIL -- "GFAIL"

Google caused a lot of trouble to its Gmail users.. The Story goes this way..

"The Gmail outage that affected many consumers and Google Apps users worldwide is now over. Users should find that they're able to access their email now without any further problems," said Acacio Cruz, Gmail site reliability manager, in a blog posting.

"The outage itself lasted approximately two and a half hours from 0930 GMT. We know that for many of you this disrupted your working day. We're really sorry about this. Our engineers are still investigating the root cause of the problem," Cruz said.

Google did not say how many clients were affected by the incident, but reports of trouble flooded the internet from all over the world.

Google stressed that problems with Gmail were very rare, but the incident was seen as a major embarrassment for the company, which is trying to persuade computer users to store more of their data online.

Chandrayaan 1

Is there water on the moon? India's lunar explorer, Chandrayaan 1, will try to find out by peeking into the moon's dark corners and sending an American probe to dig there.

When Chandrayaan heads for the moon on October 22, it will carry on board a 6.5-kg mini synthetic aperture radar (MiniSAR) developed by the Johns Hopkins University applied physics laboratory and the Naval Air Warfare Centre. It will look for water-ice in the permanently shadowed regions of the lunar poles by digging a few metres into the surface.

Although lunar samples brought back by previous missions show the moon to be pretty dry, recent discoveries suggest water-ice may exist in its polar regions. The lunar poles contain areas that are permanently dark, creating cold traps or zones that, because the sun never shines on them, may be as cold as 50-70 Kelvin (about minus 223 to minus 203 Celsius).

Hubble Mission....What's New ??

The US shuttle Atlantis faces nearly twice the risk of being struck by debris on a mission next month to the Hubble telescope, due to the high levels of space litter floating at the altitude of Hubble's orbit, NASA said.

"It's a very challenging mission. We have hazards we don't typically have for an ISS (International Space Station) mission," NASA space shuttle programme manager John Shannon told a news conference on Monday.

"We have a one-in-180 chance of getting some type of catastrophic damage from micro-meteorites/orbiting debris (MMOD) compared to an ISS mission, which is typically a one-in-300 chance," he said.

Hubble is orbiting some 600 kilometers above earth, compared with 240 kilometers for the ISS.

When the risk faced by a shuttle mission is greater than one-in-200, the decision to go ahead with the flight has to come from the highest authorities in NASA, said Shannon.

But he expected they would give the green light for the Atlantis mission to lift off on what will be its final mission to conduct maintenance work on Hubble.

"Our risk has increased, but our ability to mitigate the risk has increased. So it makes us feel pretty good about it," said Shannon.

"MMOD is the biggest risk for all shuttle flights" and the risk grows the higher above the earth's surface the shuttle flies, he said.

Space has become more littered and dangerous in the past year due to mishaps, tests and aborted missions involving American, Chinese and Russian satellites and rockets, he said.

Artificial Big-Bang Started......What's New ??

A project to re-enact the "Big Bang" at CERN near Geneva on Wednesday is getting the rap treatment on the Internet from a group of young people working there.

"Twenty seven kilometres, a tunnel underground "Designed with a mind to send protons around "A circle that crosses through Switzerland and France "Sixty nations contribute to scientific advance," it runs.

The nearly five-minute video has been a big hit on YouTube (www.youtube.com) and some other sites (www.vimeo.com and www.teachertube.com), far more than the 23-year-old American would-be science writer who wrote the words ever expected.

Scientists at the world's largest particle collider have fired the first protons into a 17-mile-long tunnel in science's next great step to understand the makeup of the universe.

Project leader Lyn Evans gave the go-ahead to send the protons into the accelerator below the Swiss-French border early Wednesday.

The $3.8 billion Large Hadron Collider was under construction since 2003. Scientists hope it will provide the necessary power to smash the components of atoms so that they can see how they are made.

The startup has been eagerly awaited by 9,000 physicists around the world who will conduct experiments here.

Some skeptics have said they fear the collisions of protons could eventually imperil Earth.

CERN is backed by leading scientists like Britain's Stephen Hawking in dismissing the fears and declaring the experiments to be absolutely safe.

Gillies told that the most dangerous thing that could happen would be if a beam at full power were to go out of control, and that would only damage the accelerator itself and burrow into the rock around the tunnel deep below the Swiss-French border.

And full power is probably a year away.

A good result for Wednesday would be to have one beam going all the way around the tunnel in a counterclockwise direction. If that works, the scientists will then try to send a beam in the other direction.

''A really good result would be to have the other beam going around, too, because once you've got a beam around once in both directions you know that there is no show stopper,'' Gillies said. ''It's going to work.''

However, if there is some blockage in the machine, experts will have to go in and fix the problem, and that could take time.

The LHC, as the collider is known, will take scientists to within a split second of a laboratory recreation of the big bang, which they theorize was the massive explosion that created the universe.

The project organized by the 20 European member nations of CERN has attracted researchers of 80 nationalities. Some 1,200 are from the United States, an observer country which contributed $531 million. Japan, another observer, also is a major contributor.

The collider is designed to push the proton beam close to the speed of light, whizzing 11,000 times a second around the tunnel.

Smaller colliders have been used for decades to study the makeup of the atom. Less than 100 years ago scientists thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of an atom's nucleus, but in stages since then experiments have shown they were made of still smaller quarks and gluons and that there were other forces and particles.

The CERN experiments could reveal more about ''dark matter,'' antimatter and possibly hidden dimensions of space and time. It could also find evidence of the hypothetical particle _ the Higgs boson _ believed to give mass to all other particles, and thus to matter that makes up the universe.

Some scientists have been waiting for 20 years to use the LHC. But even their younger colleagues are excited that startup has finally arrived.

''I think it's a very important project,'' said Katie McAlpine, 23, a Michigan State University graduate who made a rap video about the project.

''It's mostly out of scientific curiosity, what is the universe made of? How does it work? What are the rules? That's very exciting and it's important to advance our knowledge,'' she told Associated Press Television News.

She said she was surprised by the success of the video, which has had more than a million views on YouTube and which has received approval from CERN for its scientific accuracy, especially in its success with young people.

Nuclear Decision....What's New ??

Most of us are aware of the fact that Prime Minister Manmohan singh was supporting for

the Nuclear Agreement to be made. It was expected that this nuclear agreement would

bring india an immense amount of nuclear material supplies which would be more helpful

for electrical generation purposes in the coming days due to sharp rise in inflation rate (12

approximately). However many parties opposed this agreement among whom were Left

parties also. Even being a part of UPA, Left felt that this could endanger lives of many, by

letting india into the hands of Mr.Bush. Hence left started warning Congress party that it

would not support Congress anymore once the agreement was signed.

However many people believed that the Left's assumption was wrong.

Mr.Manmohan singh assured that the agreement in no way will affect India's freedom for

nuclear testing. It was all written in the agreement. However the american embassy at that

time of talks kept this whole thing a secret. But the new embassy revealed this fact leading

to a great confusion to all the people who believed in Manmohan Singh's words whether

to adopt this deal or not.It included that America will stop supplying nuclear fuel when

India uses it to test their nuclear power. It will not even be lending their scientific research

or technology, nor allowing us to stockpile nuclear fuel, nor are we allowed enrich

uranium to make it into plutonium or on our own.

Now its time to take the a quick decision at the Nuclear Suppliers' Group meet in

Vienna. This decision may uplift the country or may even thrash the country's pride and control.

Let us wait to hear it !!

IPV6 addresses by 2010

The Internet will run out of addresses in another two years as only 700 million separate addresses are remaining for allocation out of the 4.3 billion available on the present network.

When originally developed, Internet planners assumed four billion IP addresses would serve the world when using the Internet, The Australian reported.

Geoff Huston, chief scientist of the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, which manages address allocation within the region – said he hovered between calling the situation a challenge or a crisis.

A shortfall in addresses would stifle networking of small and simple devices for energy management for lighting, intelligent building systems and remote-control sensors.

In order to address the situation, all Internet users would have to move to an upgraded platform -- called Internet Protocol v6.

This technology would allow access to the 340 trillion-trillion-trillion new addresses needed to connect not only billions of new users, but also the trillions of sensor devices that will require networking as technology takes greater control of people’s lives.

“IPv6 provides more addresses in cyberspace than there are grains of sands on the world’s beaches,” said Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society