2.61 T Science and Tech Flashcards

Question

Project Insight

Answer 1

 It is a project launched by Union Finance Ministry to monitor high value transactions and detect tax evaders using technology with a view to curbing circulation of black money.  It will use data mining, big data analytics to scoop out tax evaders from social media platforms to deduce mismatches between spending pattern and income declaration.  The linking of PAN (Permanent Account Number) with Aadhaar will be key identifier to be used by IT Department to link and analyse various transactions relating to tax payers.  The integrated information technology platform will help in catching tax evaders in non-intrusive manner using technology and without traditional intrusive methods like search and seizure.  It will use technology to allow government collate databases of IT forms, IT returns, TDS/TCS statements and Statement of Financial Transactions received from financial institutions.

Answer 2

What is Raman Effect?  Some part of light beam after passing through a transparent medium gets scattered.  This phenomenon of scattering of light is termed as Raman Scattering and the cause of scattering is called the Raman Effect.  The wavelength of these scattered rays is different from that of the incident rays of light.  Thi phenomenon was explained/discovered by Indian physicist Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (CV Raman) on February 28, 1928.  This discovery was awarded with the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930.  Feb 28 is observed as National Science Day in India

Answer 3

 Sodium Nitrite is a white crystalline powder.  It is an oxidising and also a reducing agent.  It is mostly used in the pharmaceutical and dye industries, lubricants, construction chemicals, rubber blowing agent, meat processing, and textiles.  Why in news? India has imposed a five-year anti-dumping duty on Sodium Nitrite imports from China.

Answer 4

 It is India’s first solar mission  It will be launched in 2019  It will study the sun’s outer most layers: o Photosphere (soft and hard X-ray), o Chromosphere (UV) and o Corona (Visible and NIR)  It will collect data about coronal mass ejection, which will also yield information for space weather prediction  It is a joint venture between ISRO and physicists from other institutes of India.  Aditya- L1 satellite will be placed in the halo orbit around the Lagrangian point 1 (L1) of the sun-earth system  Utility: The data from Aditya mission will be immensely helpful in discriminating between different models for the origin of solar storms and also for constraining how the storms evolve and what path they take through the interplanetary space from the Sun to the Earth Objectives of mission  Study dynamic nature of sun’s outer most layers, the corona and the chromosphere, and collect data about Coronal Mass Ejections (CME).  Study on origin of solar storms and their path through the interplanetary space from the Sun to the Earth.  The studies will also focus on collection of information for space weather prediction.

Answer 5

 ASPIRE stands for Advanced Supersonic Parachute Inflation Research Experiment.  It is a supersonic parachute developed by NASA.  The test of ASPIRE was meant to mimic conditions that spacecraft will experience during red planet entry, descent and landing (EDL).

Answer 6

 Asteroids are small, airless rocky worlds revolving around the sun that are too small to be called planets. They are also known as planetoids or minor planets.  In total, the mass of all the asteroids is less than that of Earth’s moon. But despite their size, asteroids can be dangerous. Many have hit Earth in the past, and more will crash into our planet in the future. What Are The Differences Between An Asteroid, Comet, Meteoroid, Meteor and Meteorite?  Asteroid: A relatively small, inactive, rocky body orbiting the Sun.  Comet: A relatively small, at times active, object whose ices can vaporize in sunlight forming an atmosphere (coma) of dust and gas and, sometimes, a tail of dust and/or gas.  Meteoroid: A small particle from a comet or asteroid orbiting the Sun.  Meteor: The light phenomena which results when a meteoroid enters the Earth’s atmosphere and vaporizes; a shooting star.  Meteorite: A meteoroid that survives its passage through the Earth’s atmosphere and lands upon the Earth’s surface. Where asteroids are located?  Most asteroids lie in a vast ring between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.  Not everything in the main belt is an asteroid, for instance, comets have recently been discovered there, and Ceres, once thought of only as an asteroid, is now also considered a dwarf planet.  Many asteroids lie outside the main belt. For instance, a number of asteroids called Trojans lie along Jupiter’s orbital path.  Three groups — Atens, Amors, and Apollos — known as near-Earth asteroids orbit in the inner solar system and sometimes cross the path of Mars and Earth

Answer 7

BeiDou Navigation System (BNS):  BNS is 2nd generation of the Chinese navigational system seen as rival to the US’s Global Positioning System (GPS)  The system comprises total 35 satellites in two separate satellite constellations o Limited test system (operational since 2000) o A full-scale global navigation system which is currently under construction.  The BNS became operational in December 2011 in China with the constellation of 10 satellites of the system  On its completion in 2020, the system will provide services to global customers.  After completion, the navigation system would become an equivalent of the US Global Positioning System, Europe’s Galileo and Russia’s Glonass.  Applications: o Civilian services: Navigation, messaging, transportation and weather forecasting sectors. o Military applications: Ensure privacy for its military communications and missile launches by reducing the dependence on US operated GPS

Answer 8

 Black hole refers to the remains of a supergiant star that has collapsed into itself.  It is so dense and has a gravitational field so intense, that light itself cannot escape from it.

Answer 9

 BLP is US$100-million global astronomical initiative launched in 2015 by Internet investor Yuri Milner and cosmologist Stephen Hawking.  It has teams from around the world to find signs of intelligent life in universe.  The 10-year programme aims to survey 1,000,000 closest stars to Earth by scanning entire galactic plane of Milky Way.  It will listen for messages from the 100 closest galaxies at 10 billion different frequencies originated beyond our galaxy

Answer 10

 Breakthrough Starshot is a comprehensive space program launched under the US $100 million Breakthrough Initiatives, announced by Yuri Milner and Stephen Hawking to develop and launch practical interstellar space missions.  The program aims to demonstrate proof of concept for light-propelled spacecraft that could fly at 20 per cent of light speed.  Its main objective is to send one-gram chips to star systems beyond the solar system in search of extraterrestrial intelligence

Answer 11

 It is the world’s largest single earth observation programme directed by European Commission in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA).  It aims at achieving global, continuous, autonomous, high quality, wide range Earth observation capacity.  It provides wide range of applications like climate change, ocean, land and atmosphere monitoring as well as support in forecasting, management and mitigation of natural disasters.  Its full, free and open data policy has proven its merits and allowed development of thriving user base in Europe and beyond.  Why in news? EU will provide free access to data of this program to India

Answer 12

 It refers to a habitable zone in the planetary system where the temperature is neither too high nor too low.  Such conditions could allow for the presence on the planet’s surface of liquid water – a key ingredient for life.  If a planet is too close to the star it orbits, any water on the surface quickly boils off, forming a steam atmosphere.  If the planet is too far from the star, any water on the surface freezes.  The habitable zone (or “Goldilocks zone”) is the range of orbital distances from a star at which liquid water can exist on the surface of a planet.  This range of distances changes depending on the size and temperature of the star.  Earth is in the habitable zone of the sun – one of the reasons our planet has liquid water like oceans and lakes.

Answer 13

 GOLD and ICON are space missions of NASA.  Both will be launched in 2018.  They will team up to explore the ionosphere, located 96 km above Earth’s surface.  GOLD stands for Global-scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD)  ICON stands for Ionospheric Connection Explorer  The two missions will be complementary to each other.  ICON will launched in low-Earth orbit (LEO) located at 560 km above Earth, like a close-up camera.  GOLD will be launched in geostationary orbit over Western Hemisphere, about 35,398 km above earth.  It will help in full-disk view of ionosphere and upper atmosphere beneath it every half hour.  The two missions can cooperate with each other when ICON passes through GOLD’s field of view and each mission can get snapshot of same region.  This overlap in their data will make it easier to identify reasons for changes in upper atmosphere at a given time.  One of missions’ goals is to measure how upper atmosphere changes in response to hurricanes and geomagnetic storms.  GOLD will also explore how upper atmosphere reacts to geomagnetic storms, which are temporary disturbances of Earth’s magnetic field caused by solar activity.  At night, GOLD will examine disruptions in ionosphere, which are mainly dense, unpredictable bubbles of charged gas that appear over equator and tropics, sometimes interfere with radio communications.

Answer 14

 Gravitational waves are oscillations in the fabric of space-time, moving at the speed of light and caused by the acceleration of massive objects.  They can be generated, for example, by supernovas, neutron star binaries spiralling around each other, and pairs of merging black holes.  Hypothesised by Albert Einstein a century ago  These were first seen last year by the ground-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Why they are useful?  These waves will be particularly useful for studying black holes (the existence of which was first implied by Einstein’s theory) and other dark objects, because they’ll give scientists a bright beacon to search for even when objects don’t emit actual light.  With this, mapping the abundance of black holes and frequency of their mergers could get a lot easier.  Since they pass through matter without interacting with it, gravitational waves would come to Earth carrying undistorted information about their origin.  They could also improve methods for estimating the distances to other galaxies.

Answer 15

 GSAT-6A is high power S-band communication satellite with a mission life of about 10 years.  It was placed in Geosynchronous orbit of Earth.  It weighs 2066 kg and is most powerful home-made communication satellite till date.  It is similar to GSAT-6, a high power S-band communication satellite that was launched back in 2015.  It will provide mobile communication to India through multi beam coverage facility.  It will also provide platform for developing technologies such as demonstration of S-Band Unfurlable Antenna, handheld ground terminals and network management techniques that could be useful in satellite based mobile communication applications.  It will be also designated for military use especially in remotest areas of the country.  Special feature of GSAT-6A: o It has 6-metre-wide umbrella-like antenna that will be unfurled in space. o The antenna is thrice as broad as antennas generally used in ISRO satellites. o It will enable mobile communication from anywhere via hand-held ground terminals. o It will require small ground station as regular communication satellites with smaller antenna require much larger ground stations. S-Band S-band is electromagnetic spectrum covering frequencies from 2 to 4 gigahertz (GHz). It is very useful and is used globally for 4G service and is extremely valuable for mobile broadband services. It crosses conventional boundary between Super High Frequency (SHF) and Ultra High Frequency (UHF) bands at 3.0 GHz.

Answer 16

 It is a communication satellite  The satellite will be an addition to the current fleet of 17 Indian communication satellites that are already providing services from space  It will also provide meteorological and satellite-based data.  Launched by Ariane-5 launch vehicle from the Guiana Space Center at French Guiana.

Answer 17

HySIS  It is an Earth Observation Satellite by ISRO  The HySIS satellite has critical chip called an “optical imaging detector array’” indigenously developed by ISRO.  Its launch will allow ISRO to enter the domain of operational hyperspectral imaging from earth orbit.  HySIS satellite developed by ISRO can see in 55 spectral or colour bands from 630 km above ground.  It can be used for a range of applications from monitoring the environment, crops, looking for oil and minerals, military surveillance. Hyperspectral Imaging  Hyperspectral imaging or hyspex imaging (imaging spectroscopy) combines the power of digital imaging and spectroscopy.  It collects and processes information from across the electromagnetic spectrum.  Hyspex imaging enables distinct identification of objects, materials or processes on Earth by reading the spectrum for each pixel of a scene from space.  The hyspex technology is still an evolving science.  It has ability to add a new dimension to plain-vanilla optical imagers.

Answer 18

 InSight is NASA’s Discovery Program mission dedicated to exploring the deep interior of Mars.  It will place stationary lander equipped with seismometer and heat transfer probe on surface of Mars to study red planet’s early geological evolution.  It is terrestrial planet explorer that will address one of most fundamental issues of planetary and solar system science.  It will help in understanding processes that shaped rocky planets of inner solar system (including Earth) more than four billion years ago.  The robotic lander will perform a radio science experiment to study internal structure of Mars by deploying seismometer and a burrowing heat probe.  It will measure Mar’s vital signs such as pulse (seismology), temperature (heat flow probe) and reflexes (precision tracking).  It will let scientists understand how different its crust, mantle and core are from Earth.

Answer 19

 The International Space Station (ISS) is a space station, or a habitable artificial satellite, in low Earth orbit.  Its first component launched into orbit in 1998, and the ISS is now the largest human-made body in low Earth orbit.  The ISS serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which crew members conduct experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology, and other fields.  Five different space agencies representing 15 countries built the $100-billion International Space Station and continue to operate it today. NASA, Russia's Roscosmos State Corporation for Space Activities (Roscosmos), the European Space Agency, the Canadian Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency are the primary space agency partners on the project.

Answer 20

About IRNSS: IRNSS is an independent regional navigation satellite system designed to provide position information in the Indian region and 1500 km around the Indian mainland. Simply put, the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) is similar to the GPS (global positioning system) of the US, Glonass of Russia and Galileo of Europe as well as China’s Beidou. It consists of a constellation of seven satellites. Features: 1. It is a constellation of total 7 satellite launched in space and a ground facility on land to receive signals from space satellites. 3 of its satellite Located in Geostationary orbit and 4 are inclined to geosynchronous orbit. However full NAVIC system has 9 satellite, 2 on ground in standby mode. 2. It covers whole India and region surrounding it up to 1500 km. 3. It provide accuracy up to 20m as claimed by ISRO. 4. Its apogee(farthest point) is 20,657km and Perigee is 284 km 5. The satellite weighs average 1330 kg approx. and each have solar panels to generate 1400wt. 6. A master control facility is set up on land to receive signals from these satellites. What areas will it cover? 1. Primary Service Area: To provide accurate position information service to users in India as well as the region extending up to 1500 km from its boundary, which is its primary service area. 2. Extended Service Area: It lies between primary service area and area enclosed by the rectangle from Latitude 30 deg South to 50 deg North, Longitude 30 deg East to 130 deg East. What all services are provided? IRNSS would provide two types of services, namely 1. Standard Positioning Services available to all users and 2. Restricted Services provided to authorised users. (Encrypted) Significance: 1. India became one of the 5 countries having their own navigation system like GPS of USA, GLONASS of Russia, Galileo of Europe and BeiDu of China. So India dependence on other countries for navigation purposes reduces. 2. It give real time information for 2 services i.e standard positioning service open for civilian use and Restricted service which may be encrypted for authorised user like for military. Currently we uses GPS system of USA for navigation. 3. It will help to mitigate the disaster effects by providing information of disaster timing, safe location and also help the disaster relief management to make earlier plans and save the lives of people in India as well as up to 1500 km around it. 4. It will help the mariners for far navigation and fisherman for get information about the valuable fisheries location and any disturbance in Sea. 5. It will help to make friendly relations with others countries by providing real time information during any calamity or disaster for mitigate its after effect and for making early plans Applications of IRNSS:  Terrestrial, Aerial and Marine Navigation.  Disaster Management.  Vehicle tracking and fleet management.  Integration with mobile phones.  Precise Timing.  Mapping and Geodetic data capture.  Terrestrial navigation aid for hikers and travelers.  Visual and voice navigation for drivers.

Answer 21

 The IRNSS-1I is overall eighth satellite to join ISRO’s NavIC navigation satellite constellation.  It replaced IRNSS-1A, the first of seven navigation satellites of IRNSS series that was rendered ineffective after its three rubidium atomic clocks failed.  IRNSS-1I was made by Bengaluru-based Alpha Design Technologies in collaboration with ISRO.  The IRNSS-1I was having lift-off weight of 1,425 kg and has life span of 10 years.  It carried two types of payloads: Navigation and Ranging.  They are L5 and S-band navigation payloads and C-band ranging payloads.  It also has corner cube retroreflectors for LASER ranging.  It will be stationed in Geosynchronous Orbit at 36,000 km height.

Answer 22

 NASA's spacecraft  JUNO is an acronym for Jupiter Near-polar Orbiter  Entered into the orbit of Jupiter  It will orbit Jupiter from pole to pole, 5,000 kilometres above planet’s cloud  Launched by NASA as part of its New Frontiers program in 2011 to study Jupiter’s composition, gravity field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere  Unmanned spacecraft  Juno is not the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter. It is second spacecraft to orbit Jupiter, after Galileo probe which had orbited the planet from 1995–2003. Galileo probe in its mission had found evidence of subsurface saltwater on Jupiter’s moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto  It is powered by solar energy.  The primary goals of the mission are to find out whether Jupiter has a solid core, how its atmosphere and magnetosphere formed, and whether there is water in the gas cloud shrouding the planet.

Answer 23

 It is world's lightest satellite weighing only 64 grams  It is designed by an Indian Student and launched by NASA  KalamSat is a 3-D printed satellite.  This is the first time that 3-D printing technology is used to make satellites  The purpose behind the launch of KalamSat was to demonstrate the performance of 3D-printed carbon fibre

Answer 24

 It is an unmanned space observatory  Launched in 2009 by NASA  It aims to detect Earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy  It does not probe the environmental conditions of planets  It works by observing a dimming in the light of a star, known as a transit, each time an orbiting planet passes in front of it  Why in news? It has discovered 10 earth like planets outside our solar system.

Answer 25

What is Lagrange points and halo orbit?  Lagrange points are the locations in space where the combined gravitational pull of two large masses roughly balance each other. Any small mass placed at that location will remains at constant distances relative to the large masses. There are five such points in Sun-Earth system and they are denoted as L1, L2, L3, L4 and L5.  A halo orbit is a periodic three-dimensional orbit near the L1, L2 or L3

Answer 26

LIGO is a large-scale physics experiment and observatory to detect gravitational waves.  A new gravitational wave detector to measure ripples in the fabric of space and time is set to be built in India by 2025. World’s third LIGO detector.  It will be built in collaboration with universities from across the globe. It will significantly improve the ability of scientists to pinpoint te sources of gravitational waves and analyse the signals. other 2 ligos are in USA

Answer 27

 MOM stands for Mars Orbitor Mission (Mangalyan)  Launched by ISRO in 2013  Launched via PSLV-XL C-25  The MOM entered into the orbit of Mars on September 2014.  It is India's first interplanetary mission and ISRO has become the fourth space agency to reach Mars, after the Soviet space program, NASA, and the European Space Agency.  The mission is a "technology demonstrator" project to develop the technologies for designing, planning, management, and operations of an interplanetary mission.  Why in news? It has completed 1000 days in Mars orbit, 5 times more than its expected lifetime.

Answer 28

 NISAR stands for NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar Mission  Aims to study the hazards and global environmental changes  Slated to launched in 2020-21  NISAR is a dual frequency (L & S Band) Radar Imaging Satellite. It will be the first radar imaging satellite to use dual frequency.  Will be launched in a Sun Synchronous Low -Earth  It is designed to observe and take measurements of some of the planet's most complex processes, including ecosystem disturbances, ice-sheet collapse, and natural hazards such as earth quakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and landslides.  The satellite is likely to be launched from India aboard an Indian launch vehicle.  Applications: o NISAR would provide info about a place more frequently. For Ex. If the present satellite take 23 to 25 days to revisit a particular spot and give the next round of info about it, NISAR would provide the repeat info in two to five days. o Objectives:  Estimation of soil moisture.  Agriculture and forest biomass  Estimation of glacier  Snow and possibility of landslide

Answer 29

 It is being developed by NASA.  It is a powerful, advanced launch vehicle for a new era of human exploration beyond Earth’s orbit.  It is designed to take astronauts to deep space destinations such as the Moon and Mars.  Orion will serve as the exploration vehicle that will carry the crew to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during the space travel, and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities.  Orion will launch on NASA’s new heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS)  SLS will launch crews of up to four astronauts in the agency’s Orion spacecraft on missions to explore multiple, deep-space destinations  Offering more payload mass, volume capability and energy to speed missions through space than any current launch vehicle, SLS is designed to be flexible and evolvable and will open new possibilities for payloads, including robotic scientific missions to places like Mars, Saturn and Jupiter

Answer 30

 Primary aim of the mission is to study asteroid 101955 Bennu, a carbonaceous asteroid.  NASA's project  OSIRIS-Rex stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer.  OSIRIS-Rex will travel for two years on a journey to Bennu, a near-Earth asteroid about the size of a small mountain  It will return with dirt samples from Bennu to Earth  NASA scientists feel that the Bennu asteroid hold clues to the origin of the solar system and the source of water and organic molecules found on Earth

Answer 31

 It is NASA's mission to explore Sun's outer atmosphere.  Aims: o To trace how energy and heat move through solar corona. o To explore what accelerates solar wind as well as solar energetic particles. o Determine structure and dynamics of magnetic fields at sources of solar wind. o Explore dusty plasma near Sun and its influence on solar wind and energetic particle formation.  It will be a robotic spacecraft.  It is named after solar astrophysicist Eugene Parker, first spacecraft of NASA to be named after living person.  Will be launched in 2018.  In its seven-year mission, PSP will explore Sun’s outer atmosphere and make critical observations to answer questions about physics of stars.  Its data will also be useful in improving forecasts of major eruptions on Sun and subsequent space weather events that impact technology on Earth, as well as satellites and astronauts in space.

Answer 32

It is considered the most remote place on Earth (at about 2400 km from any spot of land in middle of the South Pacific Ocean).  It is often used to crash-land defunct satellites and thus is called the spacecraft cemetery.Between 1971 and mid-2016, space agencies all over the world have dumped between 260 and 300 spacecraft into the region

Answer 33

 PSLV is third generation launch vehicle indigenously designed and developed by ISRO.  It is one of world’s most reliable and versatile workhorse (launch vehicles) with 39 consecutively successful missions by June 2017.  It is four stages launch vehicle and first Indian rocket to be equipped with liquid stages.  It can take up to 1,750 kg of payload to Sun-Synchronous Polar Orbits (SSPO) of 600 km altitude and payload of 1,425 kg to Geosynchronous and Geostationary orbits.  Four Stages: o The uppermost stage or fourth stage of PSLV comprises of two Earth storable liquid engines. o The third stage is solid rocket motor that provides upper stages high thrust after the atmospheric phase of the launch. o Second stage of PSLV uses an Earth storable liquid rocket engine, known as Vikas engine, developed by Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre. o The first stage uses the S139 solid rocket motor that is augmented by 6 solid strap-on booster.

Answer 34

 Pulsars are highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars that emit a beam of electromagnetic radiation.  They are spherical, compact objects that are about the size of a large city but contain more mass than that of the sun.  Scientists are using pulsars to study extreme states of matter, search for planets beyond Earth’s solar system and measure cosmic distance.

Answer 35

 It is Japanese version of GPS.  It is also called Michibiki system. Michibiki means guidance in Japanese.  It is intended for civilian use, with a claimed positioning accuracy down to mere centimetres.  The QZSS constellation of 8 satellites will trace out a figure-8 pattern over Japan, the Western Pacific, and Australia.  The Michibiki system can cover the Asia-Oceania region and works with the US-operated GPS to provide higher level of precision than previously possible with fewer satellites in visible range.  It will become operation in 2018 with four satellites focusing on country and wider region.  It will provide global positioning and timing services across frequencies ranging from 1575.42 MHz to 2 GHz.

Answer 36

 A team of Indian astronomers have identified previously unknown, extremely large supercluster of galaxies called Saraswati  Saraswati supercluster is one of the largest known structures in the nearby universe.  It is 4 billion light years away from Earth and may contain the mass equivalent of over 20 million billion suns.  It has 43 galaxies that may contain thousands of suns, besides having billions of stars, planets, other bodies, gases and dark matter.  It is estimated to be stretched over 650 million light years in distance.  The discovery of Saraswati supercluster will help astronomers in understanding galaxy formation and evolution, effect of superclusters on environment of the galaxies. What is a Supercluster?  A supercluster is a chain of galaxies and galaxy clusters.  It is bound by gravity consisting of tens of thousands of galaxies.  It often stretches several hundred times the size of clusters of galaxies.  Thus, it can be said, galaxies are made of billions of stars and planets and grouped into clusters.  These clusters of galaxies, in turn, are grouped together to form superclusters.  The Milky Way, the galaxy in which earth is located is part of a supercluster called the Laniakea Supercluster.

Answer 37

 SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corporation) is aerospace manufacturer and space transport services company headquartered in California, US.  It was founded in 2002 by Internet tycoon Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors and former PayPal entrepreneur with the goal of creating the technologies to reduce space transportation costs and enable colonization of Mars.  SpaceX has developed the Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 launch vehicles, both designed to be reusable, thus reducing the cost of launch.  It also has developed Dragon spacecraft to supply cargo to ISS. It is also developing manned version of Dragon.  In 2008, SpaceX had created history by launching first privately funded, liquid-propellant rocket Falcon 1 to reach orbit in 2008.  It also became first privately funded company to successfully launch, orbit and recover spacecraft (Dragon) in 2010.  It was also first private company to send a spacecraft to ISS, in 2012.

2.61 T Science and Tech Flashcards

(61 cards)