TechTales

Faced with a shrinking budget, NASA will in many ways need to reinvent itself if the agency hopes to continue leading the charge in space exploration. There's perhaps no better example of that "do more with less" mantra than the PhoneSat project, the goal of which is to build the lowest-cost and easiest to assemble satellites ever placed into orbit. To create such a thing, engineers have turned to off-the-shelf consumer gadgets for parts, harnessing the internals of Google's Nexus hardware as the brains of the operation. They're starting small, however: the mission of PhoneSat 1.0 — powered by a Nexus One — is merely to stay alive for a short period of time and beam pictures of space back to ground control. All the while, the nanosatellite will be monitoring its own health and keeping NASA scientists informed of any mal-effects space has on its hardware. PhoneSat 2.0 expands on those capabilities thanks to faster hardware. A Nexus S will serve as ...

Stephen Hawking is the world's most famous living scientist and a symbol of the triumph of willpower over adversity.  Paralysis sufferers could soon learn to talk again after scientists discovered how the brain allows humans to pronounce vowels, a new study has claimed. Scientists are investigating the use of brain waves to create a new form of communication which could return the power of speech to paralysis sufferers like Physicist Stepehen hawking. Diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease at 21, Hawking, now 70, relies on a computerised device to speak. The new research could pave way for prosthetic devices in the brain returning the power of speech to those paralysed by injury or disease. Researchers followed 11 epilepsy patients who had electrodes implanted in their brains to pinpoint the origin of their seizures, with neuron activity as they uttered one of five vowels or syllables containing the vowels recorded. They found two areas, the superior temporal gyrus and ...

Preparations for the historic 100th mission of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) were on with the space agency planning to launch PSLV C-21, which will carry two foreign satellites in September. “We have two capsules, a remote sensing satellite from France and a small Japanese satellite will be the co-passenger. Preparations are going on. We plan to have the launch in the second week of September,” ISRO Chairman Dr K Radhakrishnan said at the Chennai airport on Wednesday. ISRO plans to launch 720-kg SPOT-6 remote sensing satellite from France (built by ASTRIUM SAS) and a 15-kg Japanese spacecraft Protiers on board the home-grown Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C21) in September, in what is perceived as a major milestone of sorts.