Neptune the eighth planet of the solar system completed its first orbit around the sun on 12 July 2011, 165 years after its discovery. Neptune is also the farthest planet from Sun. It was discovered by German astronomer Johann Galle on 23 September 1846. Neptune is blue-green in colour and it was named after Roman God of Sea. Neptune completes one revolution every 165 years.
Doctors in Spain performed the world’s first double-leg transplant, giving two new legs to a man whose legs were severed in an accident. The man lost both of his legs above the knee in an accident and the attempts to fit him with artificial limbs were not successful. Pedro Cavadas of La Fe hospital in Valencia performed the operation. He is the first doctor in the world to successfully transplant a jaw and a new tongue while doing a face transplant.
India on July 15 successfully launched its latest, 1410 kg communication satellite GSAT-12 onboard a powerful Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, PSLV-C17, from Sriharikota. It is the 18th successful mission in a row for ISRO. GSAT-12 was injected into an elliptical Transfer Orbit of 284 km perigee (closest point to Earth) and 21,000 km apogee (farthest point to Earth). Subsequently, the onboard Liquid Apogee Motor would be used to place the satellite in a circular orbit. GSAT-12, aimed at augmenting the capacity in the INSAT system for various communication services like tele-education, tele-medicine and Village Resource Centres, would be co-located with INSAT-2E and INSAT-4A satellites. This was the second time in its 19 flights that the PSLV has been used for launching a communication satellite after Kalpana-1 in 2002.
Giant glider-like aircraft completed the first night flight propelled only by solar energy on July 7th.Solar Impulse, whose wingspan is the same as an Airbus A340, flew 26 hours and 9 minutes, powered only by solar energy stored during the day. It was also the longest and highest flight in the history of solar aviation. The plane, which has 12,000 solar cells built into its 64.3-metre wings, is a prototype for an aircraft that its creators hope will carry out its first circum-navigation of the globe from 2012.Bertrand Piccard, the Swiss president of the project, best known for completing the first round-the-world flight in a hot air balloon in 1999, said the success of the flight showed the potential of renewable energies and clean technology.
The Union government unveiled a new remote sensing data policy called the Remote Sensing Data Policy 2011(RSDP2011) which allows all data of resolutions up to 1 metre to be distributed on a non-discriminatory basis. The new policy replaced the 2001 policy. Apart from opening up the remote sensing sector, the RSDP 2011 will remove restrictions to facilitate more users to get high resolution data for developmental activities. Restrictions as per the earlier 2001 policy, was removed. Now there is no bar on publishing of high resolution, remote sensing data of up to one metre resolution.
After 134 flights over three decades, The space shuttle Atlantis’ voyage will close when the final space fly to International Space Station(ISS) from Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre on July 8. The shuttle began its long-career in the 1970s as a successor to the Apollo moon craft and was designed to be the first reusable space craft. The maiden flight in April 1981 by astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen aboard shuttle Columbia formally ushered in the new era with a two-day, six-hour mission and 36 orbits of Earth. Since then, shuttles have flown more than 800 million kilometres -- more than the distance between Earth and Jupiter -- and brought more than 350 people into orbit, launched crucial satellites, ushered in a new era of cooperation in space and built the International Space Station.