Science Snippets

Shubhanshu Shukla Travels to Space

As part of NASA’s efforts to expand access to space, four private astronauts are in orbit following the successful launch of the fourth all private astronaut mission to the International Space Station.

A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft lifted off at 2:31 a.m. EDT Wednesday from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying Axiom Mission 4 crew members Peggy Whitson, former NASA astronaut and director of human spaceflight at Axiom Space as commander, ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) astronaut and pilot Shubhanshu Shukla, and mission specialists ESA (European Space Agency) project astronaut Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski of Poland and HUNOR (Hungarian to Orbit) astronaut Tibor Kapu of Hungary.

A collaboration between NASA and ISRO allowed Axiom Mission 4 to send the first ISRO astronaut to the station. The space agencies are participating in five joint science investigations and two in-orbit science, technology, engineering, and mathematics demonstrations, a NASA statement said.

The spacecraft is scheduled to autonomously dock at approximately 7 a.m. to the space-facing port of the space station’s Harmony module.

The crew is scheduled to remain at the space station, conducting microgravity research, educational outreach, and commercial activities for about two weeks before a return to Earth and splashdown off the coast of California.

Shukla, who is the mission pilot, is India's second astronaut going into space after Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma made history in 1984.

Source: NASA to Welcome Fourth Private Astronaut Mission to Space Station

Life Outside Solar System?

Astronomers claim, though cautiously, that they have detected possible signatures of life outside the solar system - in the atmosphere of the exoplanet K2-18b, which is 124 light years (about 700 trillion miles) away from us.

The exoplanet is 2.6 times as large as Earth.

The results of the research have been published in the The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Prof. Nikku Madhusudhan from Cambridge's Institute of Astronomy led the research.The researchers, using data from the James Webb Space Telescope(JWST), have detected dimethyl sulfide(DMS) and dimethyl disulphide(DMDS) in the atmosphere of K2-18b. On Earth, DMS and DMDS are only produced by living microbial organisms such as marine phtoplankton.

The concentrations of DMS and DMDS in K2-18b's atmosphere are estimated to be thousands of times stronger than on Earth. A research news of the University of Cambridge has quoted Prof. Madhusudhan as saying, "Given everything we know about this planet, a Hycean world with an ocean that is teeming with life is the scenario that best fits the data we have."

Prof. Madhusudhan has acknowledged that there could be previously unknown chemical processes at work on K2-18b that may account for the observations.

Source: Strongest hints yet of biological activity outside the solar system

Aditya Inserted in Halo Orbit

After a complex journey of about four months, Aditya-L1, India's first solar observatory, was successfully placed in a Halo orbit around Lagrangian Point L1 on 6 January 2024 with an orbital period of about 177.86 Earth days.

The orbit is located 1.5 million km from earth. The mission lifetime of Aditya-L1 will be five years.

Aditya L1 was successfully launched by ISRO on 2 September 2023, and began its 125-day journey to the Lagrange Point 1 (L1) of the Sun-earth system about 1.5 million km from the Earth, which is about 1% of the Earth-Sun distance.

L1 is a location in space where the gravitational forces of two celestial bodies, such as the Sun and Earth, are in equilibrium. This will allow the observatory to remain relatively stable and to continuously and uninterruptedly view the Sun.

Aditya is expected to provide useful information for understanding the problem of coronal heating, coronal mass ejection, pre-flare and flare activities and their characteristics, dynamics of space weather and propagation of particle and fields.

Source: Halo-Orbit Insertion of Aditya-L1 Successfully Accomplished

Incredible Life: Asleep for 46,000 Years!

A team of researchers found two "sleeping" soil nematodes (roundworms) in the Siberian Permafrost (perennially frozen sediments) in 2018 and "awakened" them after thawing the worms in a lab. A radiocarbon dating revealed that the worms had gone to "sleep" about 46,000 years ago!

Anastasia Shatilovich at the Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science RAS in Russia revived the nematodes found from a fossilized burrow in silt deposits in the Siberian permafrost, 40 metres below the surface.

The research team's findings have been published in the journal PLOS Genetics.

The worms belonged to a previously undescribed species. The researchers named it Panagrolaimus kolymaensis after the Kolyma River — the region from where the nematodes were found.

The species was parthenogenetic, and was cultivated in the laboratory for over 100 generations.

In their introduction to the study, the researchers have mentioned that organisms from diverse taxonomic groups can survive extreme environmental conditions by entering into a state of suspended animation or cryptobiosis.

Source: A novel nematode species from the Siberian permafrost... and Nematode from the ice age

Fatherless Birth

An 18-year-old female American crocodile, maintained in isolation all its life at a reptile park in Costa Rica, laid a clutch of eggs in its enclosure, and researchers found one egg to contain a fully formed stillborn fetus. The crocodile had self-produced without the involvement of a male crocodile.

The researchers have published their findings in the journal Biology Letters. The researchers discovered 14 eggs in the crocodile's enclosure in January 2018. Seven eggs appeared to be fertile and were artificially incubated. The eggs did not hatch, so the researchers opened them up. One egg was found to contain a fully formed stillborn fetus.

The scientists determined that the fetus was a female. Sex chromosomes are absent in crocodilians; the sex of the offspring depends upon the temperature. At temperatures below 30℃ and above 33℃, American crocodiles produce female offspring and give birth to males at temperatures around 31.5℃. In the present case, the seven eggs were incubated at 29-30℃.

The ability to produce offspring without the genetic contribution of males is termed facultative parthenogenesis; it is observed in a variety of shark, snake, and lizard species and in birds as well.

Source: Discovery of facultative parthenogenesis in a new world crocodile