India To Study Black Holes With First Satellite Launch After US (bloomberg.com) 27
India launched its first satellite on Monday to study black holes as it seeks to deepen its space exploration efforts ahead of an ambitious crewed mission next year. From a report: The spacecraft, named X-ray Polarimeter Satellite, was propelled into an orbit of 350 kilometers from an island near India's main spaceport of Sriharikota, off the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, according to S. Somanath, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation. The satellite, weighing about 470 kilograms, will carry out research on X-rays emanating from around 50 celestial objects with the help of two payloads built by ISRO and a Bengaluru-based research institute.
NASA launched a similar mission, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, in 2021 to answer questions such as why black holes spin and build on the findings of its flagship telescope Chandra X-ray Observatory that blasted off more than two decades ago. China's National Space Administration launched the country's first X-ray space telescope to observe black holes, pulsars and gamma-ray bursts in 2017.
NASA launched a similar mission, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, in 2021 to answer questions such as why black holes spin and build on the findings of its flagship telescope Chandra X-ray Observatory that blasted off more than two decades ago. China's National Space Administration launched the country's first X-ray space telescope to observe black holes, pulsars and gamma-ray bursts in 2017.
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How dare you. That woman was a saint!!
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She had a couple of saintly attributes and she waved them in everyone's face every chance she got.
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I'm sad that you could have had a normal life.
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Well they are in for a big disappointment as they watch me go from work, supermarket, home every office day, maybe yard work on weekends. "Hey, XB148372894 is going for coffee again! ZOOM IN"
Okay, I give up (Score:3)
What does the headline mean? And note that it's lifted straight from the Bloomberg story - can't blame this one on Slashdot's editors or the submitter. If "after US" wasn't there, it'd make more sense - as a sentence, anyway. But India already has other satellites [wikipedia.org] - one would assume that means this isn't their first launch.
Note that the story itself is straightforward - I'm just trying to wrap my head around what the headline writer was trying to say!
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Lol I know, it's like it was written by a 1990's AI
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You're expecting a further sentence after that phrase, but it isn't necessary. Look at as "First Satellite Launch After US Launch." It's poorly written, especially since the article doesn't mention the US launch they're referencing.
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The summary references the US launch. An x-ray observing sattelite launched 2021.
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Where does the summary get that?
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Why not just read it? Or use the search function and search for X-Ray, lol.
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Weird, when I read it, it's only a few sentences. Doesn't mention. Maybe my screen reader is off.
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Second paragraph: NASA launched a similar mission, the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, in 2021
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I only see two paragraphs:
"India launched its first satellite on Monday to study black holes as it seeks to deepen its space exploration efforts ahead of an ambitious crewed mission next year.
"The spacecraft, named X-ray Polarimeter Satellite, was propelled into an orbit of 350 kilometers from an island near India’s main spaceport of Sriharikota, off the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, according to S. Somanath, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation."
Where are you seeing that sentence?
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Oh, I see, under the ads there's a 'register to see more.' No thanks.
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Interesting. I never had an add in the middle of a post.
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It's the a mission to measure polarization of cosmic X-rays following IXPE, a collaboration between NASA and the Italian space agency (ASI) that was launched in 2021. There were a small number of previous attempts to measure the polarization of X-rays from black hole sources and similar systems (e.g. accreting neutron stars and pulsars) but they were much less sensitive and didn't achieve so much.
I suspect the reporters writing about the Indian mission either don't understand polarization, or else decided i
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What does the headline mean? from the Bloomberg story
It seems to me they are just setting up a joke. [wikipedia.org]
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It's the next x-ray satellite after the one the US launched, which itself was the second one after China launched one.
Looks like a bit of rah rah US no 1, despite the fact that the US is clearly no 2 after China.
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Excuse You (Score:3)
Funny, as a European, I could say the exact same thing about the US... Heck, I could say that about almost any country, but not my own filthy rich country. We do have a space program though.
India studying black hole (Score:1)
I'm an old guy. Before I had ever heard of collapsed stars denser than neutron stars, I had heard of the Black Hole of Calcutta.
No Need To Launch (Score:2)
India doesn't need to launch satellites, they have more than enough material to study at home. There are so many "black holes" of corruption!
Disgusting (Score:2)
I genuinely find this disturbing, disgusting, appalling and evil.
The UK has given India billions of pounds in aid, as has the US. Yet India has an infrastructure that is crumbling away, not having been updated since separation. The poverty gap is terrible and severe hand-to-mouth poverty itself is widespread if not endemic in rural areas. A significant percentage of the population doesn't have access to a toilet. Using the word "shithole" somewhere here is literally the correct word.
...and they are spending