By Amila Sandun Basnayaka. Do you believe that we may set up a journey to Mars in 100 days using a nuclear rocket.  Our solar system consists of an average star called the Sun and eight planets without Pluto. This is a really big place not to be travelled by a person. It takes you forever to travel.  But there was one technique back in 1960s developed by a nuclear rocket propulsion. When we were supposed to go for deep space missions, it is mandatory to power a nuclear thermal propulsion. This technology is making progress for potential use on future deep space missions such as Mars mission by 2033. The funding including the mission is $125 million to erect this technology within the agency's space technology programme, compared to an administration request for no funding. If you want to visit Mars using a chemical rocket, you will blast off from Earth and go into low Earth orbit. Then at the right moment, you'd fire your rocket, raising your orbit from

By Dilini Ayesha "So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.”- Christoper Reeve SEDS Sri Lanka is a member of SEDS family. Mainly focus on aviation & aerospace industry conducting several observation camps, awareness sessions and several competitions annually. This time we are teaming up to European Rover Challenge which is co-organized by the European Space Foundation, Mars Society Polska, Starachowice Special Economic Zone and the Kielce  University of Technology. European Rover Challenge (ERC) is targeting enthusiastic innovators all over the world. ERC has become one of the biggest International Robotics events in the world  considering the number of participants. As the 6th edition, ERC2019 is willing to commence with 56 teams from 16 countries all around the world representing 6 continents. Amidst the lack of resources and finances, Sri Lanka has

Let’s Meet with A Sri Lankan  Scientist As the 3rd  event in the series of space talk which are going to happen  2nd of June, 2019 with a Sri lankan student who has been studying his higher education and as a researcher. Maleen Wijerathne who is a Phd candidate and research assistant at Department of Mississippi State University in the topic of ‘Cosmic Rays ’ will be discussing. This  online session is conducting by the students namely Sathika Gunarathne (Faculty of medicine,University of Colombo)  and Thimira Chandrasekara (Faculty of Engineering,Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology)  .All of astro lovers can join with this video session broadcast on SEDS Sri Lanka YouTube channel at 8.30  p.m. onwards.

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 the

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 because

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