Orionid Meteor shower

The Orionid meteor shower, usually called Orionids, is associated with Halley's Comet. These are so called because they appear to come from a point called the radiant,which lies in the Orion constellation. Orionids are an annual meteor shower which last for one week in late-October.

The Orionid meteor shower is produced by Halley's Comet, named on astronomer Edmund Halley who calculated its periodicity in 1705.It passes through inner solar system every 76 years.When the comet passes through the solar system,some rock particals break from it due to removal of ice layer of the comet by sun.After the passage of comet,these particles continue on the comet's trajectory and appear as meteors or "falling stars" when they pass through Earth's upper atmosphere.

The Eta Aquariids are other meteor shower which is associated with Halley's Comet.It is visible from mid April to late May every year.It is so named because its
radiant point appears to lie in the constellation Aquarius, near star, Eta Aquarii.

Halley's Comet last appeared in 1986 and will next appear in 2061.

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JUNO: Mission MARS

Juno is a mission to the planet Jupiter by NASA. Juno was launched on August 5, 2011.This spacecraft will be placed in a polar orbit to study the planet's composition, gravity field , magnetic field etc. Juno will also search for clues about how Jupiter formed.Juno was God Jupiter's wife according to mythology.
It was launched by an Atlas V551 rocket.
It will be a five-year journey to Jupiter, arriving around July 4, 2016. The spacecraft will travel roughly over a total distance of 2.8 billion kilometers .It will orbit Jupiter 33 times during one Earth year. Juno will use a gravity assist speed boost from Earth,through an Earth flyby two years (October 2013) after its launch.

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VIASAT-1 Satellite

VIASAT-1

With 140 Gbps total throughput capacity, the new satellite can serve the accelerating growth in bandwidth demand for multimedia Internet access over the next decade. The download and upload speeds available on ViaSat-1 will be much faster than anything previously offered in the satellite industry, and will transform the quality of satellite broadband.

The high-capacity Ka-band spot beam satellite covers North America and Hawaii, enabling a variety of new, satellite Internet access services beginning with WildBlue in the U.S. and Xplornet in Canada.

Then, beginning in 2012, the technology is also scheduled to begin delivering this new level of service to airline passengers aboard JetBlue Airways and Continental Airlines.

Viasat-1 left Earth from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The lift-off for its carrier Proton rocket occurred at 00:48 local time (18:48 GMT Thursday). The flight was declared a success just over nine hours later.

Viasat-1 will be moved to a geosynchronous position at 115 degrees West, and should become fully operational in 2012 after a period of testing.The satellite carries the name of San Diego-based space technology supplier Viasat, but will be pressed into service for its satellite broadband division, Wildblue Communications.

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Spaceshuttle..

The Space Shuttle was a manned orbital rocket and spacecraft system operated by NASA on 135 missions from 1981 to 2011. The system combined rocket launch, orbital spacecraft, and re-entry spaceplane with modular add-ons. Major missions included launching numerous satellites and interplanetary probes, conducting space science experiments, and the servicing and construction of space stations. A major international contribution was the Spacelab payload suite, from the ESA. The system has become a symbol of the United States of America
The space-capable orbiters built were OV-102 Columbia, OV-099 Challenger, OV-103 Discovery, OV-104 Atlantis and OV-105 Endeavour.

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Where is a day longer than a year?

On planet VENUS !

A Venusian day is longer than a Venusian year.Venus is the slowest spinner of all the planets,taking 243 days to spin once.But as it spins it travels on its orbit around the sun once every 224.7 days.The time period between one sunrise and the next is 117 earth days.

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How hot is the Sun ?

It depends where you put your thermometer.....


CORONA (Outer atmosphere) : 2 million° C (3.6million°F)
CHROMOSPHERE (Inner atmosphere) : 20,000°C to 1 million°C
PHOTOSPHERE : 5,500°C
CORE   : 15 million°C
About 75% of sun is hydrogen,most of rest is helium.

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Apollo 11

The guidance computer on the Apollo 11 lunar module that landed on the Moon in 1969 had just 72 kilobytes of memory-thats less than some calculators today!

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How many Galaxies are there in the Universe ?

About 125 billion.

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How old is UNIVERSE ?

13.7 billion years old.

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What is the weight of Earth ?

Weight of earth = 5.9742 × 10^24 kilograms. It is composed mostly of Iron (32.1%), oxygen (30.1%), silicon (15.1%), magnesium(13.9%), sulfur (2.9%), nickel (1.8%), calcium (1.5%), and aluminium (1.4%); with the remaining 1.2% consisting of trace amounts of other elements.

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