by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
By Fakir Balaji,
Bengaluru : India will launch 31 satellites, including the earth observation spacecraft Cartosat on January 10, from its spaceport at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, an official said on Saturday.
“We have tentatively scheduled the rocket launch at 9.30 a.m. to carry Cartosat and other satellites, including 28 from the US and five other countries in a single mission,” Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Director Devi Prasad Karnik told IANS here.
The first space mission in 2018 onboard the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C40) comes four months after a similar rocket failed to deliver the country’s eighth navigation satellite in the earth’s lower orbit on August 31.
“The sixth Cartosat in the second series and other satellites are integrated with the rocket at the spaceport. The mission launch board will decide the rocket’s lift-off time for the reverse countdown two days ahead,” said Karnik.
The mission’s payload will also include one each nano and micro satellite from India, besides Cartosat-2.
As an observational satellite, Cartosat will beam high-quality images for cartographic, urban and rural applications, coastal land use and regulation and utility management like road network monitoring.
The previous two satellites in the Cartosat-2 series were launched on June 23 and February 15, from the spaceport on the east coast, about 90km up Chennai.
As a follow-on mission, Cartosat will also relay high resolution scene specific spot imageries with data from its panchromatic and multi-spectral cameras operating in time delay integration mode.
The space scientists are taking special measures to ensure the 44.4 metre rocket will sling the 720kg Cartosat and other satellites one-after-one into their intended orbits.
“The August 31 mission suffered a setback when the 320-tonne workhorse launcher (PSLV-C39) did not separate the heat shield to deliver the spare satellite in the Indian Remote Navigation Satellite Series (IRNSS-H) from its cone-shaped top-end,” recalled another official.
To make up for the lost time when launches were held up for four months pending inquiry into the August 31 mission failure, the space agency plans to have at least one launch a month in 2018.
“We have lined up five-six launches in the first half of next year, including two for deploying GSAT-6A and GSAT-29 advanced communication satellites in the geo-synchronous orbit (36,000km above earth),” asserted the official.
The space agency will also launch its second lunar mission (Chandrayaan-2) to the moon, with an orbiter, lander and rover for the first time.
The 3,290 kg Chndrayaan-2 will orbit around the moon and study its lunar conditions to collect data on its topography, mineralogy, exosphere and the “presence” of water ice and hydroxyl.
On reaching the 100 km lunar orbit, the lander with the six-wheeled rover will separate from the spacecraft and descend slowly to soft land on the lunar surface at a designated spot.
“The rover will move around the landing site in semi-autonomous mode as per the ground commands while its instruments will observe the lunar surface and transmit the data for analysis of its soil,” added the official.
(Fakir Balaji can be contacted at fakir.b@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Business, Corporate, Corporate Buzz, Markets, Networking, Sales, SMEs, Technology
New Delhi : Global IT security firm Quick Heal’s Enterprise Security brand Seqrite has discovered an advertisement on DarkNet forum that claims to have access to data of over 6,000 Indian businesses that include Internet Service Providers (ISPs), some of the key government organisations, banks and enterprises.
Seqrite Cyber Intelligence Labs, along with its partner seQtree InfoServices, tracked the advertisement where the unknown hacker has priced the information at 15 Bitcoins (nearly Rs 42 lakh) and is offering network takedown of affected organisations for an unspecified amount, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.
“This can be a major tool of mass disruption if a non-state actor gets hands on it,” Seqrite said on its website.
The organisations whose services may be at risk are: UIDAI (Aadhaar), Idea Telecom, Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), Flipkart, DRDO, Aircel, Reserve Bank of India, BSNL, SBI, TCS, ISRO, ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund, VMWare, Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation and various Indian state government portals, among others.
“We have alerted the government authorities well within time. If someone gets control over this massive data that is currently up for sale on DarkNet, the above mentioned organisations and enterprises can get affected,” Rohit Srivastwa, Senior Director, Cyber Education and Services at Quick Heal, told IANS.
Following a detailed investigation, researchers identified the affected organisation as India’s national Internet registry IRINN (Indian Registry for Internet Names and Numbers) which comes under the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI).
As a precautionary measure, Seqrite reached out to the government authorities and Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), recommending to them to alert all potentially affected organisations and urge them to change passwords and get their servers and systems patched with latest updates.
According to the researchers, the seller claims to have the ability to tamper the IP allocation pool, which could result in a serious outage or Denial of Service (DoS) attack-like condition.
“This could impact various content delivery network (CDN) and hosting providers as well. If the hacker gets an interested buyer, then an attack on the system could disrupt Internet IP allocation and affect Internet services in India,” the company said.
“Along with the access, the hacker is also selling credentials and various contractual business documents and claims to have access to a large database of Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC),” it added.
The IRINN provides allocation and registration services of IP addresses and autonomous system numbers.
It comes under NIXI which “is the neutral meeting point of the ISPs in India with the primary objective being the facilitation of exchange of domestic Internet traffic between peering ISP members”.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Markets, Media, News, Technology
New Delhi, (ANI) The Indian Space Research Organization, ISRO begins its 48-hour countdown for the launch of a record 20 satellites from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikotta at 9.26 am today.
The Mission Readiness Review Committee and the Launch Authorization Board of the national space agency met last night and gave their approval for the countdown.
The payloads will be taken aboard the proven workhorse PSLV C34 that will be ignited at 9.26 am on Wednesday and put them on a 505 km sun synchronous orbit one after the other.
The satellites include Cartosat-2 Series remote sensing payload of India for earth observation purposes, two Indian students satellites and 17 other micro and nano satellites of foreign customers from the US, Canada, Germany and Indonesia.
This is the highest number of satellites to be carried by an Indian launch vehicle and hurled into space.
The second launch pad of the national spaceport at Sriharikotta in Andhra Pradesh, some 90 kilometers off Chennai, is now buzzing with activities, as the countdown is set to start for a historic launch on Wednesday.
The high profile mission has importance not only for the record number of payloads. Once the PSLV C34 puts the satellites into their circular low earth orbits, it will not wind up its operation immediately, as it used to be in the past.
A similar experiment with a single re-ignition of the PSLV on December 16 last year proved to be a grand success.
More such experiments will enable ISRO to put many satellites at different heights in a single mission in future.
