KalamSat, named after former president of India APJ Abdul Kalam, is the world’s smallest and lightest satellite built by students from Tamil Nadu.
This is the first time that an Indian student's experiment has been carried out by NASA.
It weighs about 64 grams which is lighter than a smart phone and made of reinforced carbon fibre polymer.
It is 3D printed satellite and it is for the first time that 3-D printing technology is being used in space.
The main role of the satellite will be to demonstrate the performance of 3D-printed carbon fibre.
VAJRA scheme
Recently, Department of Science and Technology (DST) launched a scheme named 'Visiting Advanced Joint Research Faculty' (VAJRA).
Under this scheme, scientists or senior researchers abroad of Indian origin or otherwise can collaborate with Indian faculties for conducting joint researches in India.
The foreign researchers would receive endowments at par with those in their own countries.
The broad areas of research like energy, health, advance material and others would be promoted under the scheme.
India BPO Promotion Scheme (IBPS)
India BPO promotion scheme (IBPS) aims at setting up business process outsourcing (BPO) units in rural areas to secure balanced regional growth of the industry.
The scheme is under the Digital India Programme to create 150,000 employment opportunities and promotion of BPO operations.
The scheme provides capital support along with special incentives up to Rs 1 lakh in the form of viability gap funding (VGF) to companies to create BPO units.
The target under the scheme is to create 48,300 BPO seats across states and Union territories (UTs) based on population percentage according to Census 2011.
Metro cities such as Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, National Capital Region (NCR), and Pune, along with their urban agglomeration were excluded.
Recently, Andhra Pradesh has emerged as the first state in the country to exhaust all the seats allocated to it under the India BPO promotion scheme (IBPS).
Bright nights
It is a phenomenon in which the night sky is bright enough to read a book even in the absence of moon light.
A new theory says it is due to slow moving, high altitude atmospheric waves merging together and amplifying the light from the naturally occurring airglow.
The theory says that, for every seven nights out of 100 there is a bright night somewhere on the earth.
