SpaceX Successfully lands Falcon 9

SpaceX's Falcon 9 joins the elite club of reusable rockets.

The Blue Origins, New Shepard made headlines this year when it became the worlds first reusable rocket after it successfully to space and made a perfect landing afterward.
In more recent news Elon Musk's SpaceX's Falcon 9 made news when it also completed this amazing feat over at Cape Canaveral

We are well aware of Musk's vision for inter planetary travel for quite some time now, and this feat has made put him that much closer to achieving it.

The Falcon 9, in its trajectory manage to launch 11 satellites into orbit, reach space and successfully return back to Earth. It is a two stage rocket meant for the reliable and safe transport of satellites and the Dragon spacecraft into orbit.

The Dragon is a free-flying spacecraft designed to deliver both cargo and people to orbiting destinations. It made history in 2012 when it became the worlds first commercial spacecraft to deliver cargo to the international space station and safely return cargo to earth. Until now it has been primarily used for the transport of cargo, although its actual development was for the transport of humans. Under an agreement with NASA, SpaceX is now developing the refinements that will enable Dragon to fly crew, as stated in their website.


Stay tuned for more developments following emerging space technologies.

You can check out more about the company's developments at its site here.

Sarthak J. Shetty
Editor In Chief

LightSail Energy

Compressed air, the new frontier in clean enrgy.

People are always looking forward towards new developments in the energy sector, more so in recent years than ever. Another company that is making news is LightSail Energy.

The product that the company is offering is a device which can store energy by compressing air in a compressor; when the energy is required for use, its pumped out of the compressor and is in turn used to drive a turbine which is attached to a generator, thereby generating electricity.

Now the main feature of this technology that is making heads turn is this: Compressing air is not an efficient process mainly because whenever the process takes place a significant per cent of the energy is wasted in the form of heat. LightSail proposes that this energy be used to heat a spray of water. This heat is stored in heat storage. When the air is to pumped out of the tanks, the stored heat is made us of. Therefore the technology that the company is developing has greatly improved the efficiency of such systems. The heat storage plays a key role in this system; LightSail proposes the heat generated during compression be made use for heating buildings, thereby eliminating the use of separate systems for heating; in the same way when the compressed air is to be expelled to drive the turbines of the generator, heat is extracted from the same buildings, thereby providing a cooling effect in the same.



The company states that this system achieves a 90% efficiency, far greater than existing systems.
The main hurdle that the company faces is the lack of capital; developing turbines, storage units, compressors etc from scratch is indeed a very expensive ordeal. Co-founder and CEO Danielle Fong, states that it requires upwards of a hundred million dollars to develop these systems.
She has also been named one of Forbes 30 Under 30, for her pioneering work in the field of clean energy.
The project has attracted funding from the likes of Peter Thiel, Bill Gates and Vinod Khosla to name a few.

Stay tuned for more developments in the field of new technologies.

Sarthak J. Shetty
Editor In Chief