by Bhathiya Senevirathne You may already came across with the phrase “Get your boarding pass to mars”. This is related to the recent project that will take part by 2020.The reason to issue a boarding pass with the name of you in it is to uplift the engagement of public community, so what is fascinating about this boarding pass? Will they really take your name to mars? The answer is yes and they are capable of taking more than one million names. For this engineers and scientists will use an electron beam to stencil the submitted names onto a silicon chip and the lines of text on it will be smaller than one thousandth the width of a human hair, so nearly this is 75 nano meters. A single dime sized chip will be covered with a glass cover with more than one million names. All of your names will be taken to the red planet with the help of a ROVER. Mars is often referred as the “Red Planet” due to its color which is given by the  iron oxides in the atmosphere of mars, becoming ...

By  Bathiya Senevirathna The world started to talk more and more about black holes after the recent image of M 87. Even people from different fields other than the astronomical field have started searching and discovering about black holes. First of all we come across with a common question that anyone would ask , What is a black hole?  The answer is pretty much simple and most of them in the community are not so aware of this. So basically a black hole is a huge amount of matter packed in to a tiny area. It’s like an object ten times bigger than the sun squeezed in to sphere with a diameter of a cricket ground, well that’s relatively pretty small after squeezing, and will result a strong gravitational field so we call this thing as a black hole. The specialty of a Black hole is it will suck everything around them, yes the everything which will enter its gravitational field. What does this mean? As mentioned above it creates a massive gravitational force...

By Sanjuka Karunathilaka The Mars 2020 rover is based on the  Mars Science Laboratory 's Curiosity rover configuration. It is car-sized, about 10 feet long (not including the arm), 9 feet wide, and 7 feet tall (about 3 meters long, 2.7 meters wide, and 2.2 meters tall). But at 2,314 pounds (1,050 kilograms), it weighs less than a compact car. In some sense, the rover parts are similar to what any living  creature would need to keep it "alive" and able to explore. The Mars 2020 rover mission is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the Red Planet. The Mars 2020 mission addresses high-priority science goals for Mars exploration, including key questions about the potential for life on Mars. The mission takes the next step by not only seeking signs of habitable conditions on Mars in the ancient past, but also searching for signs of past microbial life itself. The Mars 2020 rover introduces a drill that can coll...

'A Journey to M87' the biggest astronomy discussion in Sri Lanka which was scheduled to be held on 18th May 2019 at University of Moratuwa has been postponed due to the reopening of all universities being delayed. The rescheduled date will be informed soon.

By Ms. Sanjuka Karunathilaka N ew robotic assistants called "Astrobees," developed by NASA to assist in the operation of the International Space Station (ISS), are equipped with a sizeable payload of cameras and sensors to allow the robotics to navigate the station. The Astrobee system was designed and built at NASA's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley for use inside the International Space Station. The project was funded by the Game Changing Development program within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate and the SPHERES facility, part of the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. It was designed, to help astronauts with maintenance, inventory tracking, conducting experiments, and studying how humans and robots will interact in space. The three Astrobees deployed to the ISS, the yellow Astrobee is named Honey, the blue bot is named Bumble, and the green bot, still on Earth, is named Queen. The bots feature a touch screen with g...

F or all the astronomy lovers and curious people , your long-awaited event is here.For the first time in SEDS history,    the biggest astronomy discussion in Sri Lanka will happen on    18th of May from 0830 onward at University of Moratuwa with  the participation of honorable professors,  Dr.Dan Marrone (Associate professor,Department of astronomy and Steward observatory),  Dr.Chi-Kwan Chan (Assistant professor,Steward Observatory)and Nishadi de Zoysa (Secretary of SEDS UOM), Sathika Gunarathna (SEDS UOC),  Arsh Nadkarni (UA SEDS) from the AZ end as speakers in this live conference , which is going to  host through hangout calls . Their plan is to cover up the fields of astronomy and specially have a look at    black holes in this discussion. This will be a great platform to enhance knowledge in field of astronomy and get very relevant scientific solution for problems in this field .Organizers of this event would like...

For the first time in Sri Lanka and the world history there will be an online conference on May,2019 which is organized by the cooperation of SEDS Sri Lanka and SEDS USA as “Event Horizon Telescope and Black Holes” . This online discussion is conducted by Amaya Rajapaksha (Secretary of SED SL) and Nishadi de Zoysa (Secretary of SEDS UOM) with the representation of distinguish professors from university of Arizona. The concept is rendered by A.Nadkrani(University of Arizona) and Amila Sadun Basnayaka(Chair of SEDS SL) under the guidence of G.Vishwaroopan(Chair of SEDS USA) and M. Kainu(SEDS UNT Founder) and was hoping that all who are interested in astronomy and space science will join with them.