Current Affairs 15th June 2019

Current Affairs 15th June 2019 - Important Points

• A heavyweight torpedo Varunastra for Indian Navy in next - 42 months
• Spitzer Space Telescope to retire in 2020 by - NASA

Current Affairs 15th June 2019 - Details

A heavyweight torpedo Varunastra for Indian Navy in next - 42 months

Indian Navy and Bharat Dynamics Limited have inked a pact recently worth Rupees 1187.82 crore for supply of heavyweight torpedo Varunastra to Indian Navy. The implementation of pact will be done in the next 42 months.
The torpedoes will be produced at Bharat Dynamics Limited Visakhapatnam unit, in partnership with the Defence Research and Development Organisation. Bharat Dynamics Limited has a dedicated unit at Visakhapatnam for producing underwater warheads.
More about Varunastra

• Varunastra is fundamentally a ship-launched, electrically-propelled underwater weapon loaded with one of the most advanced automatic and remote-controlled guidance systems.
• The weapon system utilises its own intelligence in tracing the target. It can smash stealth submarines underwater.
• Varunastra is 7-8m long, weighs 1500 kgs and has a diameter of 533 mm.
• The Varunastra torpedo when fired can travel at 40 knots/74 km/h. The operational range is 40 kms and it can transport a warhead weighing 250 kgs.
• The weapon has been jointly formed by the Naval Science and Technology Laboratory, Visakhapatnam  and the Bharat Dynamics Limited Hyderabad.

Spitzer Space Telescope to retire in 2020 by - NASA

Spitzer space telescope of NASA will be retiring on January 30th, 2020, assured by Jet Propulsion Laboratory in a statement. Spitzer is going to close permanently after about 16 years of exploring the cosmos in infrared light. By 2020, Spitzer space telescope will have worked for above 11 years beyond its chief mission.
It was released in January 1983 as Infrared Astronomical Satellite, mutually developed by the USA, the Netherlands, and the UK, to conduct the 1st infrared survey of the sky. Spitzer is the only one of the Great Telescopes not released by the Space Shuttle, as was originally intended.
More about Spitzer

• Spitzer is a small but transformational telescope. It captures infrared light, which is often released by warm particles that are not quite hot enough to emit visible light.
• Spitzer lifted the veil on secreted objects in nearly every corner of the universe, from a new ring around Saturn to annotations of some of the most distant galaxies known.
• In 2017, the telescope discovered the presence of 7 rocky planets around the TRAPPIST-1 star.
• In some cases, Spitzer's remarks were combined with data by other missions, with NASA's Kepler and Hubble space telescopes.