Indian scientists have successfully launched 104 satellites from a single rocket, marking a new global record. The country sent the spacecraft into orbit from the southern spaceport of Sriharikota, with the rocket carrying 101 satellites from international customers along with India’s own earth-observation satellite, totalling a payload of 1378 kilograms. The country had beaten Russia’s earlier record of 37 satellites launched at once.
The head of India’s space agency, AS Kiran Kumar, said it was “a remarkable feat” and that the satellites were successfully placed in orbit. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among those to praise the successful launch on social media. Indian President Pranab Mukherjee tweeted: “Heartiest congratulations to @isro (Indian Space Research Organisation) on the successful launch of PSLV-C37 and CARTOSAT satellite together with 103 nano satellites!”
Scientists discovered a new instrument that can measure extreme ultraviolet light in a way that is ten times better than any previous method. The instrument, called the time-resolved extreme ultraviolet microscopy with nickel-filtered spectroscopy (TREX), was developed by an international team of researchers led by Liang Gao, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Illinois.
TREX uses a method called “dispersive Fourier transform” to produce brighter, crisper images of the very short wavelengths of UV light used in semiconductor manufacturing, carbon dioxide laser research and other fields. Unlike previous methods which were limited to producing either spectral information or spatial images, TREX enables researchers to track both in real-time. The technology “is applicable not only to better understand many fundamental physics problems but also to many industrial process controls,” Gao said.
