Life notes
We don't have a problem with the West, we're just obsessed with it
How much do we not know about what Indian researchers are doing simply because Western scientists haven't written to some of them?
NASA
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The significance of Cassini's end
Many generations of physicists, astronomers and astrobiologists are going to be fascinated by Saturn because of Cassini. I wrote this on The Wire on September 15. I lied. Truth is, I don't care about Saturn. In fact, I'm fascinated with Cassini because of Saturn. We all
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The bad, avoidable and useless forms of journalism
Bad journalism: A Hindustan Times report on March 2 claims a high-schooler from West Bengal won a "prestigious" scholarship sponsored by NASA to study at Oxford University, having been selected on the back of a theory she had developed on blackholes. The piece was one-sided. Avoidable
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Summing up the 'water on Mars' announcement
I wrote an explainer summing up (almost) all we know about the recent NASA announcement of finding water on Mars for the Mumbai Mirror. An excerpt: Because with large oceans of liquid water and an atmosphere rich in gases like oxygen, Mars could've harboured life — at least life
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Space is necessarily multifarious, ISRO
Here's a great example of why space-exploration is a multifarious industry where it takes excellence on multiple fronts at the same time to make each mission a success, even on seemingly unrelated fronts. The example also shows the pride of financial frugality can last only for so
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Defending my review of 'The Martian'
I wrote my first movie review for The Martian and I wonder if I've done it some disservice, although I think it is defensible (from myself, not anyone else). In a wonderful interview of Salman Rushdie published in Mint recently, the author says it's not his
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The Planetary Society says humans orbiting Mars is important before they land on it
A notional timeline for the 2033 mission was presented also, with crewed test-flights in cislunar orbits being planned for 2025 and 2027. The launch window provides a suitable focus year because NASA hopes to have tested the necessary spaceflight technologies and experience through its ARM in the 20
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NASA readies to test history's largest, most powerful booster for its new rocket
NASA's massive heavy-lift rocket, the Space Launch System, which will one day ferry humans to deep-space destinations and back, has become notorious for the scale of engineering backing it. In September 2014, agency administrator Charles Bolden had unveiled the world's largest welder to mark
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A voyager on an unknown sea
Download vger20141215.mp3 Early 2012. The Voyager 1 space-probe is millions of kilometres beyond the orbit of the dwarf planet Pluto. In fact, it's in a region of space filled with scattered rocks and constantly perturbed by charged particles streaming in from outer space. Has it left
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Spitzer has helped choose a near-Earth object the A.R.M. could bring nearer
From its perch up in space, Spitzer can use its heat-sensitive infrared vision to spy asteroids and get better estimates of their sizes. This is what the author of a study that appeared in Astrophysical Journal Letters on June 19 said in a NASA press release about the space