Science & Technology Current Affairs October 2015 (Part 3)

China Successfully Launched Carrier Rocket Long March-11

• China successfully launched a new model of carrier rocket, the Long March-11 on September 25, 2015 from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the North- Western province of Gansu. The rocket carried four micro-satellites into space, which will be used mainly for testing.
• The solid propellant rocket was- developed by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology with the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation. The rocket will mainly be used for launching micro-satellites.
• The trip was the 211th mission for the Long March rocket family following its first launch in April, 1970 when a long March 1 rocket had put China’s first satellite Dong Fang Hong-1 into the orbit.
• This was China’s eighth launch in 2015, following the missions sendr 3 Beidou global positioning satellites the Gaofen-8, Gaofen-9 and Yaogan Weixing-27 earth observation satellites to the space.

G SAT-6 Military Satellite Successfully Positioned in Orbit

• The Indian space agency had successfully positioned the country’s military communication satellite GSAT-6 in its orbital slot of 83° East and co-located with INSAT 4A, GSAT 12, GAAT 10 and IRNSS1C on September 16, 2015. It carried out four drift arresting manoeuvres.
• The satellite was launched by India’s heavy rocket Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle-Mark II (GSLV) and put into Geo Transfer ‘ Orbit (GTO) on August 27. The satellite’s life expectancy is nine ye and weighs 2117 kg.
• The satellite provides communication through five spot beams in S-band and a national beam in C-band for strategic users. The satel¹ is having S-Band Unfurlable Antenna (UFA) of 6 m diameter. This is the largest antenna ever made by ISRO for a satellite.

Read Also – Smart Practice Current Affairs September 2015 .

ISRO Celebrated One Year of ‘Mars Orbiter Mission’

• Mars Orbiter spacecraft marks one year of its life around the red planet Mars on September 24, 2015. In this regard, the ISRO released an atlas containing photos taken by the colour camera on board the spacecraft and results obtained by other five payload results in a form of scientific atlas.
• It has obtained Mars Global data showing clouds, dust in atmosphere and surface albedo variations, when acquired from apoapsis at around 72000 km. On the other hand high resolution images acquired from periapsis show details of various morphological features on the surface of Mars.
• The MOM spacecraft was designed, built and launched in record period of less than two years. MOM carried five science instruments collecting data on surface geology, morphology, atmospheric processes, surface temperature and atmospheric escape process.

• India on September 24, 2014, had successfully placed its low-cost Mars spacecraft in orbit around Mars on its very first attempt. ISRO had launched that spacecraft on its nine-month-long odyssey on a homegrown PSLV rocket from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh on November 5, 2013, and it had escaped the earth’s gravitational field on December 1, 2013.

LAPAN A2/Orari Satellite Sent to India for Launch

• Indonesia’s second indigenously-made LAPAN A2/Orari satellite sent to India on September 4, 2015 to launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on September 27, 2015. It will function as a tool to monitor land usage, ship movements, sea resources and fishing explorations.
• It is also equipped with an automatic packet reporting system on board to aid disaster mitigation by monitoring floods, changes in the sea level as well as movements of the population.
• The satellite will orbit the Earth along the equator with an altitude of 650 km, and travel at 7.5 km per second—enabling it to circle the Earth 14 times a day.
• The satellite is produced by the National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN) of Indonesia in 2012 and a successor to LAPAN Al/Tubsat, which was also launched in India in 2007.

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