Chandrayaan 2 hours away from lander, orbiter separation, expected by 1.45 pm today

Chandrayaan 2 — ISRO's second moon mission — completed its final orbit-lowering manoeuvre yesterday (1 September) evening. Now, the next step is the separation of the landing module (the Vikram lander with the Pragyan rover inside it), which is scheduled for today (2 September) between 12.45 and 1.45 pm IST.

If successful, the Vikram lander will then be put on a separate, circular path identical to the orbiter, passing over the lunar poles at a distance of roughly 100 km from the surface.

By attaining a near-circular orbit, there are only three more mission milestones before the Vikram lander attempts its planned soft-landing on the moon's surface on 7 September at 1.55 am IST. This includes two deorbit (orbit-lowering) manoeuvres on 3 and 4 September and its powered descent from an elliptical orbit of 36 x 110 km between 1.30-2.30 am on 7 September.

Chandrayaan 2 composite orbiting the moon before the lander's separation. Image: ISRO

Over the course of the next few days, the first maps of the landing site will be created (planned for 3 and 4 September) by the Vikram lander to ensure the landing site is safe, as previously thought, to make a soft-landing. This is a crucial step in the mission since ISRO's mission engineers won't be operating the spacecraft remotely from the control centre.

The orbiter will also be surveilling its year-long home for the first time, ensuring that no damage was caused to its instruments on the journey so far and conducting a thorough examination of the Vikram lander's landing site at the moon's South Polar region.

While subsequent events in the mission won't be streamed live, you can catch live updates on the mission on our dedicated Chandrayaan 2 domain, our Twitter page, ISRO's website, or Twitter page.

from Firstpost Tech Latest News https://ift.tt/2jPrL2c

Huawei confirms Mate 30, Mate 30 Pro launch for 19 September: All we know

Huawei has confirmed the launch date for the launch of its 2019 flagship smartphones — Mate 30 and Mate 20 Pro.

The Huawei Mate 20 Pro. Image: tech2/Omkar Patne

In line with a recent rumour, Huawei's latest tweet reveals that the Mate 30 series of phones will be officially unveiled on 19 September. Per the tweet, Huawei will be hosting the launch event in Munich, Germany and the tagline for the event is “Rethink Possibilities.” The company will be live streaming the event on its official website. In case you want to book mark the event, you can head to the company website and click on the 'Save The Date' button to be reminded ahead of the launch.

Did you get it right? The countdown to #HuaweiMate30 starts now!
We're going full circle in Munich on 19.09.2019.
Join us live: https://t.co/9ugi5gG9ci#RethinkPossibilitiespic.twitter.com/etRYjrBVEC

— Huawei Mobile (@HuaweiMobile) September 1, 2019

Huawei Mate 30 series: What software will it run?

After Huawei's trade ban extension ended in August, Google announced last week that Huawei's upcoming Mate series will not be powered by Android operating system.

A Google spokesman said that the Mate 30 cannot be sold with licensed Google apps and services due to the US ban on sales to Huawei. A temporary reprieve that the US government announced last month does not apply to new products such as the Mate 30, the spokesman said.

Meanwhile, Huawei spokesman Joe Kelly said that "Huawei will continue to use the Android OS and ecosystem if the US government allows us to do so...Otherwise, we will continue to develop our own operating system and ecosystem."

This leaves no option for Huawei but to use its own operating system for the new Mate phones. Recently, the company senior vice president Vincent Yang said that Huawei would like to maintain its current Android ecosystem on smartphones and will only use Harmony OS as a plan B in the case sanctions are again imposed on it.

(Also Read: Hongmeng OS (Ark OS): Google's absence could create big problems for Huawei)

Harmony OS is reportedly a microkernel-based operating system that is similar to the Fuchsia OS that is being worked upon by Google. Over the next three years, Harmony OS will be optimised and gradually adopted across a broader range of smart devices, including wearables, Huawei Vision, and head units for your car.

Simultaneously, Huawei also made it clear that Harmony OS was not meant to replace Android on smartphones but is meant to work across various devices with a focus on security.

 

Huawei Mate 30 series: Expected specifications and features

The Mate 30 series is expected to be powered by Huawei HiSilicon Kirin 990 SoC. According to a report in GizChina, the Kirin 990 SoC is expected to be manufactured on the EUV 7 nm process by TSMC. The Mate 30 series would also come incorporated with a 5G modem, the HiSilicon Balong 5000 5G modem. We don't know yet whether all Huawei Mate 30 Pro phones will come with a 5G modem or there will be a special 5G variant of the Mate 30 series, just like with the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G.

The Mate 30 Pro is expected to come with a 6.7-inch AMOLED display with a 90 Hz refresh rate. It is said to be sporting triple cameras on the back with 40 MP sensors, which will offer up to 5x optical zoom and 50x digital zoom. The setup is being speculated to be powered by a 4,200 mAh battery and will come with a 55 W fast-charging adapter.

from Firstpost Tech Latest News https://ift.tt/2lqlSJr

Your Paytm, Amazon Pay And PhonePe Wallet Will Work as Usual, till February 2020

The RBI has extended the deadline that required all mobile wallet companies to do the Full KYC for all users, and you can rest easy for the moment.

from Top Tech News- News18.com https://ift.tt/2lqd5Hr

Malicious websites hacking iPhones were reportedly targeting Uyghur Muslims in China

Last week, researchers at Project Zero basically uncovered a series of hacked websites that have been attacking iPhones for years without anyone knowing. However, the latest report claims that these malicious websites were targeting Uyghur Muslims in China.

According to a report by TechCrunch, the malicious websites were "part of a state-backed attack — likely China — designed to target the Uyghur community in the country’s Xinjiang state." Reportedly, these websites are a part of the Chinese government's latest effort to crack down on the minority Muslim community.

Google researchers revealed that there are a number of websites that have been at work attacking iPhones users that visited them. These websites had “thousands of visitors” per week for at least two years, Google said.

iPhone. Image: Reuters

Notably, soon after reporting their findings to Apple, the iPhone manufacturer patched the vulnerabilities earlier this year in iOS 12.1.4 update.

In May this year, another report revealed that the Chinese authorities are using a mobile app designed for mass surveillance to profile, investigate and detain Muslims in Xinjiang by labelling "completely lawful" behaviour as suspicious, a Human Rights Watch report said Thursday.

Beijing has come under international criticism over its policies in the northwest region of Xinjiang, where as many as one million Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities are being held in internment camps, according to a group of experts cited by the UN.

from Firstpost Tech Latest News https://ift.tt/2ZIDHSn

Researchers find the reason behind mass extinction on Earth 420 million years ago

Around 420 million years back in the pre-historic Silurian Period, Earth suffered a major mass extinction, which wiped out almost 23 percent of the marine life.

However, the reason behind this major mass extinction of Earth, which always remained a mystery, has now been unravelled by researchers. They have found an answer to this event considered as one of the ten most dramatic extinctions in Earth's history.

Referred to by scientists as the Lau/Kozlowskii extinction, it was triggered by an all-too-familiar culprit: rapid and widespread depletion of oxygen in the global oceans.

The findings of the study were published in the journal — Geology and the study was conducted by researchers from Florida State University.

Representational Image.

Unlike other famous mass extinctions that can be tidily linked to discrete, apocalyptic calamities like meteor impacts or volcanic eruptions, there was no known, spectacularly destructive event responsible for the Lau/Kozlowskii extinction.

"This makes it one of the few extinction events that is comparable to the large-scale declines in biodiversity currently happening today, and a valuable window into future climate scenarios," said study co-author Seth Young, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science.

Scientists have long been aware of the Lau/Kozlowskii extinction as well as a related disruption in Earth's carbon cycle during, which the burial of enormous amount of organic matter caused significant climate and environmental changes. But the link and timing between these two associated events -- the extinction preceded the carbon cycle disruption by more than a hundred thousand years -- remained stubbornly opaque.

"It has never been clearly understood how this timing of events could be linked to a climate perturbation, or whether there was direct evidence linking widespread low-oxygen conditions to the extinction," said Chelsie Bowman, FSU doctoral student, who led the study.

Researchers used advanced geochemical methods including thallium isotope, manganese concentration, and sulfur isotope measurements from important sites in Latvia and Sweden to reconstruct a timeline of ocean deoxygenation with relation to the Lau/Kozlowskii extinction and subsequent changes to the global carbon cycle.

The team's new and surprising findings confirmed their original hypothesis that the extinction record might be driven by a decline of ocean oxygenation.

Their multiproxy measurements established a clear connection between the steady creep of deoxygenated waters and the step-wise nature of the extinction event — its start in communities of deep-water organisms and eventual spread to shallow-water organisms.

from Firstpost Tech Latest News https://ift.tt/2zKvbry

Chandrayaan 2 composite completes final in-orbit manoeuvre before Vikram lander's separation

Chandrayaan 2, India's second moon mission, has completed its final orbit-lowering manoeuvre around the moon at 6.21 pm this evening. With this final adjustment to the spacecraft's altitude, the Chandrayaan 2 composite was lowered from an elliptical orbit of 126 x 168 km (nearest x farthest distance) elliptical orbit to an almost-circular orbit of 114 x 128 km.

The spacecraft's onboard propulsion system (popularly known as "thrusters" were fired for 52 seconds in the mission's fifth and final orbit-lowering manoeuvre in the moon's orbit.  ISRO has also announced that the landing module (the Vikram lander with the Pragyan rover inside it) is scheduled for separation on 2 September between 12.45 - 1.45 pm. If successful, Vikram lander will then be put on a separate, circular path identical to the orbiter, passing over the lunar poles at a distance of roughly 100 km from the surface.

Chandrayaan 2 composite orbiting the moon before the lander's separation. Image: ISRO

By attaining a near-circular orbit, there are only three more mission milestones before the Vikram lander attempts its planned soft-landing on the moon's surface on 7 September at 1.55 am IST. This includes two deorbit (orbit-lowering) manoeuvres on 3 and 4 September and its powered descent between 1.30-2.30 am on 7 September.

Over the course of the next few days, the first maps of the landing site will be created (planned for 3 and 4 September) by the Vikram lander to ensure the landing site is safe, as previously thought, to make a soft-landing. This is a crucial step in the mission since ISRO's mission engineers won't be operating the spacecraft remotely from the control centre.

The orbiter will also be surveilling its year-long home for the first time, ensuring that no damage was caused to its instruments on the journey so far and conducting a thorough examination of the Vikram lander's landing site at the moon's South Polar region.

While subsequent events in the mission won't be streamed live, you can catch live updates on the mission on our dedicated Chandrayaan 2 domain, our Twitter page, ISRO's website, or Twitter page.

from Firstpost Tech Latest News https://ift.tt/2NJ6bZP

Apple Products Expected to go Costlier With the Introduction of new 15 Percent US Tariffs

Apple iPhone, AirPods, Apple Watch, HomePods and iMac PCs could get a price hike in the US.

from Top Tech News- News18.com https://ift.tt/2ZLH7YM