ISRO flight-tests scramjet engine, joins elite club
Joining a select club of nations, India successfully test fired its futuristic Scramjet Rocket Engine using oxygen from the atmosphere that could cut the cost of the launches several fold and help in Indian Space Research Organisation’s bid to design advanced air breathing engines. The first experimental mission of Scramjet Engine was successfully conducted from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. The mission was described as a “modest” yet important milestone in its bid to design and develop advanced air breathing engines, including ones for its future space transport system.
India is the fourth country to demonstrate the flight testing of Scramjet Engine after the US, Russia and European Space Agency.
After a smooth countdown of 12 hours, the solid rocket booster Advanced Technology Vehicle (ATV) carrying the Scramjet Engines lifted off at 6 AM and ending a 300 seconds-flight, touched down in the Bay of Bengal, about 320 kms from Sriharikota, the city-headquartered ISRO said. The important flight events — burn out of booster rocket stage, ignition of second stage solid rocket, functioning of Scramjet engines for 5 seconds followed by burn out of the second stage — took place exactly as planned, ISRO said. The twin Scramjet engines were mounted on the back of the second stage. Once the second stage reached the desired conditions for engine “Start-up”, necessary actions were initiated to ignite the Scramjet engines and they functioned for about 5 seconds. The vehicle was successfully tracked during its flight from the ground stations at Sriharikota.
The Scramjet engine designed by ISRO uses Hydrogen as fuel and the Oxygen from the atmospheric air as the oxidizer. Usually rocket engines carry both fuel and oxidiser on board for combustion, but these newly developed engines with air-breathing propulsion system will use oxygen from the atmosphere thereby reducing the lift-off mass of the vehicle. It will also help in bring down launch costs substantially.
The Scramjet engine will also be used eventually to power ISRO’s reusable launch vehicle at hypersonic speed. ATV is a two-stage spin stabilised launcher with identical solid motors (based on Rohini RH560 sounding rocket) as the first as well as the second stage (booster and sustainer), ISRO said.
Serious Fraud Investigation Office
The SFIO is a multi-disciplinary organization under Ministry of Corporate Affairs, consisting of experts in the field of accountancy, forensic auditing, law, information technology, investigation, company law, capital market and taxation for detecting and prosecuting or recommending for prosecution white-collar crimes/frauds.
The SFIO will normally take up for investigation only such cases, which are characterized by
- complexity and having inter-departmental and multi-disciplinary ramifications ;
- substantial involvement of public interest to be judged by size, either in terms of monetary misappropriation or in terms of persons affected, and;
- the possibility of investigation leading to or contributing towards a clear improvement in systems, laws or procedures.
The SFIO shall investigate serious cases of fraud received from Department of Company Affairs.
The Head Office of SFIO is at Delhi and five Regional offices are presently functional i.e. at New Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Kolkata.
Dragonfly 44
A massive galaxy consisting almost entirely of dark matter has been discovered, using the world’s most powerful telescopes.
Dark matter is the invisible ‘gravitational glue’ that holds galaxies together and is thought to make up five sixths of the universe’s mass. The galaxy, named Dragonfly 44, is roughly the same mass as the Milky Way, but our galaxy has a hundred times more stars. It is located 330 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Coma.
The mass of the Dragonfly 44 galaxy is estimated to be a trillion times the mass of the sun, which is very similar to the mass of our own Milky Way galaxy. However, only one hundredth of one per cent of that is in the form of stars and “normal” matter. The other 99.99 per cent is in the form of dark matter, making it dramatically different.