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Showing posts from June, 2021

China's Baihetan Hydropower Project

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  Image Courtesy: @ChinaMissionVie/ Twitter China's Baihetan hydropower facility—claimed to be the largest hydropower station under constructionin the world—on Yangtze river's upstream branch began generating electricity for the first time on 28 June. According to the state media, after a three-day trial, the project’s first two 1-gigawatt (GW) turbines will begin functioning and when completed in July 2022, it will have 16 such units, making the plant’s total generation capacity second only to the Three Gorges Dam in Hubei province. Baihetan dam, located on the border between the southwestern provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan, was built by the China Three Gorges Corporation. It is part of a series of dams on the Jinsha River, which is the Yangtze's upstream branch. Despite the fact that the corporation claimed it was one of China's largest and most difficult engineering projects, with a dam height of 289 metres (948 feet), construction took only four years. As per the

ISRO May Launch First Crewed Spaceflight In 2023 Despite Challenges Posed By Covid-19 Pandemic

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  Only three countries have sent humans into space as of now—the United States, Russia and China. But now, a fourth one is on the way. It is India’s space exploration agency, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).   Even though the list of leading countries with the highest government expenditure on space programs doesn’t include India, ISRO has achieved incredible success over the years. From hauling elements of the first rocket on a bicycle to discovering water on the Moon, the Indian space agency has come a long way. Now, it expects that achieving future goals can begin with Gaganyaan (sky-vehicle), which is ISRO’s first crewed mission programme. But Gaganyaan’s timeline is still unclear because of the Covid-19 pandemic.   ISRO’s first four would-be space travellers recently spent almost a year in Russia getting acquainted with old Soyuz capsules and replicating spaceflight conditions in centrifuges and pressure chambers. They have now returned to India, where they w