Tiangong-2
- Tiangong-2 (“Heavenly Palace”) is a Chinese Space Laboratory.
- It is an experimental space station which carried out research and human operations in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
- It was launched on September 2016 and it was has deorbited on July 19, 2019 spent over 1,000 days in orbit.
- It was brought down to Earth in a controlled fashion and burned up over the South Pacific ocean by China.
- It followed the Tiangong-1, China’s first space station, which crashed into the southern Pacific Ocean on 2018.
- It deploys to space the first-ever ‘Cold Atomic Fountain Clock’ which has a higher precision than conventional atomic clocks.
- It detected 55 ‘gamma-ray bursts’ by a device names POLAR installed on the spacecraft.
- It also docked a micro-satellite that took high-resolution pictures of the connected space lab and Shenzhou-11 manned spacecraft.
Lightning strike
- 29 people have been killed by lightning over the past 36 hours in Bihar.
- India sees 2000-2500 lightning deaths every year on average.
- Lightning is the biggest contributor to accidental deaths due to natural causes.
- It is a rapid, massive discharge of electricity in the atmosphere, some of which is directed towards the Earth’s surface.
- It is an electrical discharge caused by imbalances between storm clouds and the ground, or within the clouds themselves.
- Occurrences of lightning are not tracked in India, as not enough data for scientists to work with.
- As water vapour moves upward in the cloud, the falling temperature causes it to condense.
- As they move to temperatures below zero degrees celsius, the water droplets change into small ice crystals.
- They continue to move up, gathering mass until they are so heavy that they start to fall to Earth.
- This leads to a system in which, simultaneously, smaller ice crystals are moving up and bigger crystals are coming down.
- Collisions triggers the release of electrons , a process that is very similar to the generation of sparks of electricity.
- This process results in a situation in which the top layer of the cloud gets positively charged, while the middle layer is negatively charged.
- The electrical potential difference between the two layers is huge, of the order of a billion to 10 billion volts.
- In very little time, a massive current, of the order of 100000 million amperes, starts to flow between the layers.
- While the Earth is a good conductor of electricity, it is electrically neutral.
- However, in comparison to the middle layer of the cloud, it becomes positively charged.
- As a result, about 15%-20% of the current gets directed towards the Earth as well.
- It is this flow of current that results in damage to life and property on Earth.
- Lightning rarely hits people directly, people are most commonly struck by what are called “ground currents”.
- The electrical energy, after hitting a large object (such as a tree) on Earth, spreads laterally on the ground for some distance.
- The people in this area receive electrical shocks.
- It becomes more dangerous if the ground is wet or if there is metal or other conducting material on it.
- Water is a conductor, and many people are struck by lightning while standing in flooded paddy fields.
- Taking shelter under a tree is dangerous, lying flat on the ground too, can increase risks.
- Grounded buildings offer protection but occupants who uses a landline phone may be shocked by conducted electricity.
Global Innovation Index-2019
- It is an annual ranking that quantifies the state of national innovation ecosystem across countries.
- Its co-published by World intellectual property organisation (WIPO), Cornell University and INSEAD.
- The CII, Dassault Systèmes and the National Confederation of Industry (CNI) and SEBRAE are its Knowledge Partners.
- It ranked 129 economies based on 80 indicators ranging from intellectual property filing rates to mobile-application creation, education spending and scientific and technical publications.
- This year’s theme– “Creating Healthy Lives - The Future of Medical Innovation”.
- Switzerland is the world’s most-innovative country followed by Sweden, the U.S, the Netherlands and the U.K.
- India maintains its top place in the Central and Southern Asia region as the 52nd ranked (57th in 2018).
- India remains 2nd among middle-income economies in the quality of innovation.
- It maintains top ranks in indicators such as productivity growth and exports of services related to information and communication technologies.
- Bengaluru, Mumbai and New Delhi features in the GII ranking on the world’s top science and technology clusters.
- India lags in areas like,
- Overall quality of education,
- Access to information and communication technologies.
- Student to teacher ratio in secondary level education.
- Proportion of women with advanced degrees in the workforce.
- Middle-income economies especially in Asia are increasingly contributing to global R&D.
- Public R&D expenditures particularly in some high-income economies are growing slowly or not at all.
- Increased protectionism poses risks. It may lead to a slowdown of growth in innovation productivity.
- Innovation inputs and outputs are still concentrated in very few economies.
- Most top science and technology clusters are in the U.S., China and Germany.
- Brazil, India, Iran, the Russian Federation, and Turkey feature in the top 100 list.
New Space India Limited.
- New Space India Ltd. (NSIL) is a Public Sector Enterprise under the administrative control of ‘Department of Space’.
- It has been incorporated as a new commercial arm of ISRO.
- It will commercialise ISRO’s space products.
- It has been incorporated to carry out the following roles and functions,
- Small Satellite technology transfer to industries from ISRO
- Manufacture of Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) in collaboration with Private Sector.
- Productionisation of PSLV through Indian Industries.
- Marketing of Space based products and services.
- Transfer of technology developed by ISRO Centres.
- Marketing spin-off technologies and products both in India and abroad.
- NSIL will act in the presence of another commercial arm of ISRO, Antrix.
- Antrix Corporation looks at foreign markets whereas NSIL will focus mostly on domestic industries for commercialisation activities.
Source: PIB, The Indian Express
