Science

NASA is returning to Earth in a big way. The space agency announced two new satellite missions that might change ‘how we see’ and ‘understand our home planet’. These are not just any satellites; rather, they are supposed to track everything from the ozone layer high up in the sky to glaciers and ice sheets…

NASA, SpaceX set for Crew 12 launch to the space station: Mission objectives explained (Image Source – NASA) Launch preparations are moving ahead at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida, where a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled to lift off at 5.15 a.m. EST (3:45 PM IST) from Space Launch Complex 40. The…

World’s quietest room: Inside the silent chamber of Microsoft where you can hear your own heartbeat (AI-generated) Inside Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, there is a room where sound behaves in an unfamiliar way. Noise from the outside does not enter, and any sound made within its walls fades almost at once. The space is…

Astronomers have observed a rare event in the solar system, a comet slowing its rotation and then spinning in the opposite direction.Comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresák, a small icy body about 0.6 miles across, displayed this unusual behaviour as it approached the sun in 2017. David Jewitt, an astronomer at the University of California, Los Angeles, studied images…

Comets usually fade quietly once they swing past the Sun. Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS did not follow the same path. Instead, as it began to exit the solar system, it flared up dramatically. NASA’s SPHEREx space telescope caught the outburst in December 2025, spotting water vapour, carbon dioxide, and complex organic compounds streaming into space. For…

Marie Curie (Image source: Wikipedia) Marie Curie was a scientist whose research changed how people thought about radioactivity and made it possible for new discoveries to be made in chemistry and physics. She was born in Poland in 1867 and moved to France for college, where she had to deal with a lot of problems…

Did Uranus’ Moon Miranda once hold a 100-kilometre-deep ocean? See what new study suggests (AI-generated) Miranda does not look like a typical small moon. The surface, seen in detail only once during Voyager 2’s flyby in 1986, carries scars that seem out of scale with its size. Wide fault systems cut across older cratered ground….

BENGALURU: India’s Space regulator-cum-promoter the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) Wednesday formally announced that it has selected Bengaluru-based Astrome Technologies, Hyderabad’s Azista Industries and Dhruva Space to to develop indigenous small satellite bus platforms under its Satellite Bus as a Service (SBaaS) initiative.TOI was the first to report in Jan that IN-SPACe…

Shubhanshu Shukla (PTI image) BENGALURU: India’s astronaut corps is not a one-off experiment but a permanent national capability, Indian astronaut Group Captain Prashanth Nair (Papa) said Wednesday, while Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla (Shux) said that a civilian flying to space will happen as the Gaganyaan programme matures.Speaking at the US-India Space Business Forum event in…

For decades, the Indian Ocean has been known for some of the saltiest waters on Earth. But it seems that’s changing. Experts say parts of the Southern Indian Ocean have become noticeably “fresher” over the last 60 years. Some reports suggest salinity has dropped by roughly 30 per cent. It might not sound like much,…