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Watch: India's Shubhanshu Shukla floating in Space Station is all things cool

Watch: India's Shubhanshu Shukla floating in Space Station is all things cool

India Today6 days ago
India's first astronaut aboard the International Space Station (ISS), Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, continues to capture the nation's imagination even after returning to Earth.This time with a video showing him 'floating' with remarkable calm in the ISS's zero-gravity environment.The video, shared on social media several days into his 18-day mission, depicts Shukla delicately practising the most basic—yet arguably most difficult—skill in orbit: staying absolutely still in microgravity.advertisement
'From the time we reached the ISS, we were quite busy chasing the timeline and completing our tasks and experiments. It is a bit challenging initially as you are learning to move in microgravity and also getting to know the station,' Shukla explained. The now-popular clip was filmed after Shukla gained confidence moving about the station—a skill that requires far more control than most realise.Even a tiny movement, he shared, sets an astronaut drifting in unexpected directions, underscoring the unique challenges of orbital life.Shukla's efforts to simply 'be still'—and his admission that 'any small disturbance can move your body in space'—have resonated widely online, drawing comparisons to the difficulty of stilling the mind in today's fast-paced world.The video also highlights the human side of ISS missions, balancing intensive scientific research with moments of reflection and adaptation.During his stay aboard the ISS as part of the Axiom-4 mission, Shukla conducted multiple microgravity experiments developed by Indian scientists and participated in educational outreach, including sharing such candid insights.His mission marks a historic leap for India's human spaceflight ambitions, serving as both a scientific milestone and a powerful source of inspiration back home.- EndsTune InTrending Reel
IN THIS STORY#Shubhanshu Shukla
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India wins 3 gold, 2 silver at Physics Olympiad in Paris, ranks 5th globally
India wins 3 gold, 2 silver at Physics Olympiad in Paris, ranks 5th globally

India Today

time15 minutes ago

  • India Today

India wins 3 gold, 2 silver at Physics Olympiad in Paris, ranks 5th globally

Three Indian students have won gold and two have earned silver medals at the 55th International Physics Olympiad (IPhO) 2025. The event was held in Paris from July 18 to 24 and featured 415 students from 87 gold medal winners from India are Kanishk Jain (Pune, Maharashtra), Snehil Jha (Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh), and Riddhesh Anant Bendale (Indore, Madhya Pradesh). The silver medals were clinched by Aagam Jignesh Shah (Surat, Gujarat) and Rajit Gupta (Kota, Rajasthan).advertisementThe news comes soon after India won six medals this year and ranked 7th amongst 110 participating countries in the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) held in Australia, one of the toughest maths exams on the planet. The team won 3 golds, 2 silvers and a bronze -- with a record-breaking score of 193 out of 252. India also performed well at the International Chemistry Olympiad 2025 in Dubai, winning 2 gold and 2 silver medals, placing 6th overall among 90 RANKS FIFTH IN MEDAL TALLYIndia shared the fifth spot in the overall medal tally in the Physics Olympiad with Taiwan, Japan, and USA stood at the top with five gold medals, while China, South Korea, and Hong Kong jointly took second place with four golds and one silver BY EXPERIENCED EDUCATORSThe Indian delegation was led by Prof Sitikantha Das from IIT Kharagpur and Vinayak Katdare, a retired faculty member from DG Ruparel College, team was also supported by scientific observers Dr Amruta Sadhu (St Xavier's College, Mumbai) and Dr Vivek Lohani (Robert Bosch GmbH, Germany).INDIA'S STRONG HISTORY AT IPHOThis was India's 26th time participating in IPhO. Over the years, Indian students have consistently done well -- with 42% winning gold, 42% silver, 11% bronze, and 5% earning honourable the last 10 years, every Indian participant has brought home a medal.- Endsinternational physics olympiad 2025, india wins olympiad, india olympiad wins, india wins 3 gold medals, ipho 2025 results, indian olympiad team, homi bhabha centre, ipho medal tally, physics olympiad 2025 india, indian students win medals, iit kharagpur olympiad, olympiad 2025 results

Shri Nitin Gadkari, Hon'ble Union Minister, to Address Vimarsh, India's Premiere Conclave on Science and Research to Encourage Collaboration
Shri Nitin Gadkari, Hon'ble Union Minister, to Address Vimarsh, India's Premiere Conclave on Science and Research to Encourage Collaboration

The Wire

time15 minutes ago

  • The Wire

Shri Nitin Gadkari, Hon'ble Union Minister, to Address Vimarsh, India's Premiere Conclave on Science and Research to Encourage Collaboration

At Vimarsh, he will meet leading scientists, innovators, start-ups, and industry leaders tackling India's urgent challenges in science and biomedical research New Delhi, Delhi, India (NewsVoir) India's research and development (R&D) sector is experiencing a period of significant growth, buoyed by the government's increasing focus and strategic initiatives to foster a robust ecosystem for scientific and biomedical innovation. While challenges persist, particularly in mobilizing research from lab to market and ensuring consistent private sector engagement, the commitment to long-term R&D is stronger than ever. Recognizing the need to further cultivate dedicated motivators, engaged researchers, clinicians, and entrepreneurs, and to strengthen collaborative frameworks, the i3 Summit aims to build upon these foundational efforts. As a sincere and proactive endeavor to further this progress, India's leading catalyst, Blockchain For Impact (BFI) announces the inaugural edition of India's conclave on science and biomedical innovation, the i3 Summit – Vimarsh. To be addressed by Hon'ble Shri Nitin Gadkari, Minister of Road Transport & Highways, Government of India, as the Chief Guest, and inaugurated by Padma Shri Dr. Balram Bhargava, Vimarsh will empower scientists and entrepreneurs to develop new ideas, connect with industry leaders and peers, and build pioneering solutions. Padma Shri Dr. Balram Bhargava is renowned for his immense contributions, including the development of indigenous COVAXIN vaccine during the pandemic, Padma Shri Dr Balram Bhargava said, "The i3 Summit – Vimarsh represents a vital confluence for India's brightest minds. It is through platforms such as this, where collective intellect and shared purpose converge, that we will accelerate our nation's progress in medical research and innovation, delivering impactful solutions for all." Sandeep Nailwal, Philanthropist & Founder, Blockchain for Impact (BFI), and Co-founder & CEO of the Polygon Foundation said, "I am deeply passionate about advancing science and biomedical innovation in India, to solve critical healthcare issues. This conclave is my sincere effort to encourage collaboration where the brightest scientific minds can come together and learn from each other. I am deeply committed to promoting ease of scientific research and biomedical innovation in India." Blockchain For Impact (BFI) Blockchain For Impact (BFI) was set up during the second wave of the COVID pandemic in India. As the world's most transparent healthcare fund, BFI initially worked towards strengthening the Indian healthcare system. However, after the COVID wave, the focus shifted towards fostering research and innovation. BFI aims to utilize and leverage the skills, commitment, and technology in the country to address current challenges and future gaps. Geared around health, BFI-BIOME Virtual Network has been established with the aim to bring institutes, incubators, research networks, medical sector and companies under one umbrella to foster collaboration in translational biomedical research. With a commitment to R&D in India, the BFI-BIOME Virtual Network Program is bringing together relevant stakeholders to discuss, identify, collaborate and innovate in the biomedical sector and expedite development of therapies, diagnostics, medical devices and other healthcare products. BFI is steadfast in its mission to enhance the well-being of marginalized communities across diverse public healthcare priorities. The initiative aspires to become a comprehensive support system, shaping the future of Indian healthcare with innovation and equity at its core. (Disclaimer: The above press release comes to you under an arrangement with Newsvoir and PTI takes no editorial responsibility for the same.).

How an India-US spy mission lost a nuclear device in the Himalayas
How an India-US spy mission lost a nuclear device in the Himalayas

India Today

timean hour ago

  • India Today

How an India-US spy mission lost a nuclear device in the Himalayas

In February 2021, devastating flash floods struck Uttarakhand, killing around 80 people, leaving 124 missing, and completely wiping out two hydropower projects. A theory resurfaced that a lost nuclear-powered surveillance device, abandoned at 25,000 feet in the Himalayas in 1965 during a joint US-India expedition to Nanda Devi, might have contributed to the disaster by melting snow and triggering avalanches. But that, thankfully, was not the investigations identified a different cause: a massive rock and ice avalanche, triggered by the collapse of a hanging glacier near Ronti Peak. The sheer force of the falling mass generated enough heat and momentum to release a deadly surge of water, debris, and silt down the Rishiganga and Dhauliganga rivers, resulting in the sudden catastrophic lost nuclear device from the Nanda Devi Plutonium Mission has returned to public discourse with every natural calamity in Uttarakhand, be it the 2021 disaster or the 2018 cloudburst, or the more recent incident of Joshimath's subsidence. The device was reportedly a listening device to keep tabs on China's nuclear programme being installed in the high Himalayas by India and the US. It was a covert operation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the US and the Intelligence Bureau (IB) of India, according to also a theory that the device, which was lost in a blizzard in 1965, was later retrieved by India for reverse-engineering decades later in 2025, nuclear anxieties are surging once again. First, a radiation scare in Pakistan's Kirana Hills, then missile strikes on Iran's nuclear sites, brought back anxieties about the risks of nuclear May, reports of a radiation leak at Pakistan's Kirana Hills, a suspected nuclear storage site, sparked concern, but the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed no radiation leak had occurred. Subsequently, US missile strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities at Fordo, Isfahan, and Natanz in June raised fears of radiological leaks, though there was no evidence of story of the long-buried 1965 plutonium mission to Nanda Devi has regained relevance and interest against this it's an opportune moment to revisit why India partnered with the CIA during the Cold War; why a nuclear-powered surveillance device was carried into the icy heights of the Himalayas; how the CIA and India's Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) collaborated and tried to deploy the thermonuclear generator device, codenamed "Guru Rinpoche", there; how it got lost, and why, even today, that lost device continues to cast a radioactive shadow over the to the mystery, a year later, when a recovery team went back to locate the device, they found it had vanished from the EVEREST TRIUMPH AND BACKDOOR CIA TIESThe story began not with espionage, but with May 1965, a team of Indian mountaineers, led by Navy officer Captain Mohan Singh Kohli, became the first Indian team to successfully scale Mount who had been inducted into the ITBP for his mountaineering skills, returned home a hero. In June, the team led by Kohli was welcomed in New Delhi by ministers, military brass, and intelligence officers."Immediately after the return of the 1965 Indian Everest Expedition to New Delhi on 23 June, I was asked to lead a covert Himalayan expedition to Nanda Devi involving leading mountaineers, intelligence officials, nuclear scientists and daredevil pilots, drawn from both the USA and India," Mohan Singh Kohli noted in his 2003 book, 'Sherpas, the Himalayan Legends'. Captain Mohan Singh Kohli (retd) (L), a distinguished officer of the Indian Navy and a renowned mountaineer, led India's first Indian Everest Expedition in 1965. The summit saw nine climbers conquer the summit, setting a world record that remained unbeaten for 13 years. (Images: PIB/IndiaPost) advertisementOne among them was Balbir Singh, a senior intelligence official, who quietly pulled Kohli aside and introduced him to RN Kao, then a low-profile officer but a razor-sharp chief of the Aviation Research Centre (ARC), the elite wing under India's Intelligence Bureau (IB).Kao, who would go on to found RAW (Research and Analysis Wing), was then heading India's covert aerial reconnaissance programme. Kohli was told he would soon travel to the United States. No explanation was given. He didn't even have a passport, but one had already been arranged, Kohli was Kohli didn't know then was that he was about to be roped into a secret CIA-ARC collaboration, one that combined mountaineering and HIMALAYAS BECAME SPY CENTRE; COLD WAR AT 25,000 FEETIn 1964, Communist China detonated its first nuclear bomb in Lop Nur, rattled both the Capitalist United States and China's neighbour, surveillance was still rudimentary, and the Americans were desperate for closer access to seismic and radiological data from China's nuclear test sites. India's newly forged friendship with the US provided an plan: install a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), codenamed "Guru Rinpoche", on a Himalayan ridge near the Nanda Devi peak (7,817 metres/ 25,646 feet), close to the Tibetan there was no source of electricity at that height, it was planned that the RTG would power a listening device to detect and transmit signals from China's nuclear experiments. Heat signatures, seismic waves, and radiation levels from China were to be collected and traditional batteries, the RTG was designed to operate without maintenance for years, with a core of Plutonium-238, which was highly RTG and the surveillance equipment weighed over 50 kilograms. Lugging it up the icy slopes of the Himalayas would take dozens of a team comprising ITBP mountaineers, American operatives, and, most importantly, Sherpas was assembled to haul it up one of the world's most treacherous routes and place it on a ridge close to the peak. China's first successful atomic bomb explosion, in 1964, spooked both the US and India. (Image: People's Pictorial, January 1965 issue) advertisementHOW BLIZZARD STOPPED CIA-IB'S NUCLEAR CLIMB TO NANDA DEVIBy mid-September 1965, Kohli and the joint CIA-ITBP team started the mission to carry the device up Nanda Devi and reached the base the unpredictable weather, the team pushed ahead, and set up a series of several stocked-up camps along the ascent was planned that a team of Sherpas would first ferry the heavy surveillance equipment from Camp IV to a suitable point near the summit. Once that was done, a second team, comprising two Indian and two American climbers, would climb up, and assemble the nuclear-powered device in a secure position and crank it by October 16, when the mission reached Camp IV with the nuclear device, nature had other plans. A severe blizzard rolled and the threat of avalanches made progress impossible. Kohli reluctantly made the call to visibility dropping and safety at stake, the team anchored the device securely into a crevice, hoping to retrieve and install it once conditions improved. They lashed the RTG to a rock at Camp IV, planning to return after the winter thaw, noted Kohli in his 2003 weather conditions and the remote location, however, allowed no further movement that season. The climbers descended, leaving behind not just their cargo, but the first signs of a future mystery. A view of the Nanda Devi and its sibling peaks from Uttarakhand's Nainital. (Image: Unsplash) HOW NUCLEAR DEVICE DISAPPEARED IN HIMALAYAS WITHOUT A TRACEWhen the recovery team returned in 1966, the device was mountaineer GS Bhangu, who also assented the Everest and the covert Nanda Devi expedition in 1965 along with Kohli, led the expedition with six Sherpas."Bhangu rushed to the rock with which he had secured the equipment in 1965. The rock ledge had broken down! There was no sign of the nuclear-powered generator. For a moment, Bhangu stood stunned and motionless. He frantically looked around. During the winter, tons of fresh snow must have fallen on Nanda Devi. Under its weight the device must have broken off the rock-ledge and gone down. To where?," noted Kohli in his rock it had been tied to had disappeared. A snowstorm or avalanche had likely swept it away."The Nanda Devi slopes were soon scoured by climbers and Sherpas trying to locate the abandoned device. The Sherpas had never been used for such work. They took it in their stride and went about this new task with great sincerity. After several days of strenuous work, they all drew a blank," wrote was a high-risk failure and a big setback. The disappearance of a nuclear device in one of the world's most ecologically sensitive and densely populated watersheds triggered alarm in both Washington and New TRACE OF NANDA DEVI N-DEVICE DESPITE SEARCH OPsThe CIA and Indian intelligence two years, search missions combed the mountain, hoping to locate the RTG before it ruptured or slid further into the valley. But Nanda Devi, 25,643 feet tall and often shrouded in ice storms, revealed internal reports, the CIA acknowledged the loss of the plutonium-powered device. The Indian government, fearing public outrage and scrutiny, never officially admitted its role in the operation until decades radiation leak has ever been confirmed.A 1978 Indian Atomic Energy Commission survey found no plutonium traces in the region, but also could not locate the 1967, two years after the Nanda Devi mission was aborted, a similar device was successfully installed on nearby Nanda Kot, a lower and less treacherous peak. That surveillance post functioned for a few months, gathering intelligence before its electronics failed. Eventually, the US transitioned to non-nuclear, solar-powered devices and later, more sophisticated satellite CIA-India nuclear mission was quietly buried under official secrecy, until it was publicly acknowledged by Kohli, and reported in the Indian and American press in the 1990s and early 2000s. A map marking Nanda Kot, the peak where a nuclear-powered surveillance device was eventually installed in 1967 after the attempt to do that at Nanda Devi failed in 1965. (Image: CIA Archive) In 1978, when the issue reached Prime Minister Morarji Desai, after questions were raised in the US, he was compelled to respond publicly by appointing a high-level scientific committee to investigate the matter, assess potential environmental dangers, and recommend steps to locate the missing nuclear device and prevent future American author Broughton Coburn, in his book 'The Vast Unknown: America's First Ascent of Everest', claimed that members of Indian intelligence agencies might have secretly trekked up the Nanda Devi route before the official spring recovery mission and retrieved the device, possibly to study its design or extract the plutonium without informing the over half a century has passed, the spectre of the Nanda Devi device has never quite and scientists continue to express concerns over radioactive contamination if the RTG were to rupture due to geological tectonic shifts or glacial as the world confronts fresh nuclear threats, from Iran to Pakistan, the missing nuclear device on Nanda Devi, which is likely buried under snow, but resurfaces regularly in the minds of people. It is an unsolved mystery that keeps spooking people.- Ends

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