Technology

Member states of the European space agency (Esa) have agreed a 10bn-euro budget at their meeting in The Hague.

The figure, which covers the next three to five years, represents a substantial increase in funding.

Ministers said the investment in space would help European industry pull through the current economic downturn.

The new money will help build new Earth observation satellites, maintain Esa’s participation in the space station, and fund probes to the planets.

“The decisions of this ministerial conference are very important just in the middle of an economic crisis,” said Peter Hintze, the minister who led the German delegation.

“Because money paid for high technology is good money for the European economy; and I think it will help us to leave the economic crisis [behind] and to gain new economic strength,” he told BBC News.

It took the science ministers from Esa’s 18 member states two days of intense discussions to arrive at the budget figure.

Agency officials had drawn up a “wish list” valued at 10.4bn euros and hoped to get at least 90% of that figure. It the end, their expectations were exceeded, with the meeting approving a budget line of 9.9bn - over a billion more than the commitments made the last time the ministers met in Berlin in 2005.

“I never expected that,” conceded Esa director general Jean-Jacques Dordain.

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More supercomputers than ever are using Intel Corporation processors, according to the latest TOP500 list. The high performance computing (HPC) community is especially enthusiastic about quad-core Intel(R) Xeon(R) processors, which are driving the research and analytical capabilities of more than half the systems on the list.

The 32nd edition of the TOP500 list shows that 379 of the world’s top 500 systems, including the third-fastest system in the world, now have Intel inside. According to the list, Intel is powering 49 systems in the top 100.

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ZONG has launched a simple, smart and elegant USB GPRS/EDGE modem that is capable of catering to all consumers needs including mobile professionals, laptop computer users and frequent travellers due to its efficiency and affordability elements.

Zong, Internet USB card will facilitate fast Internet browsing, instant access and the uninterrupted ability both to upload and download data. Combining cutting edge technologies with sleek design, ZONG’s customers can look forward to enjoying high-speed wireless access, both at home and on the go.

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NASA says the Phoenix Lander

A dust storm and the onset of Martian winter have brought the Phoenix Mars Lander’s mission to an end, NASA announced Monday.

“We are actually ceasing operations, declaring an end to mission operations at this point,” project manager Barry Goldstein with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory told reporters in a teleconference.

Mission controllers last heard from the vehicle on November 2.

Despite ongoing efforts to re-establish contact using NASA satellites in orbit around Mars, the spacecraft is silent.

“We’ll constantly turn on the radio and try to hailPhoenix to see if it is alive, but at this point nobody on the team has any expectations of that happening,” Goldstein said. “But we do hope the vehicle will surprise us once again.”

The Phoenix team knew when it selected a landing site on Mars’ arctic plain that the spacecraft would not survive a winter there. But researchers picked it anyway because satellite observations indicated vast quantities of frozen water were in that area, most likely in the form of permafrost.

They thought such a location would be a promising place to look for organic chemicals that would signal a habitable environment.

Phoenix landed on May 25 — mid-summer in the Martian year — and conducted five months of research, scooping up soil samples for analysis in onboard scientific instruments. The sun never sets on the arctic region during the summer, so the solar-powered craft had plenty of power for the first few months of its mission.

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India is celebrating the arrival of its Chandrayaan 1 spacecraft at the Moon.

An 817-second burn from the probe’s engine on Saturday slowed Chandrayaan sufficiently for it to be captured by the lunar body’s gravity.

The craft is now in an 11-hour polar ellipse that goes out to 7,502km from the Moon and comes as close as 504km.

Further brakings will bring the Indian satellite down to a near-circular, 100km orbit from where it can begin its two-year mapping mission.

Launched on 22 October, Chandrayaan is India’s first satellite to break away from the Earth’s gravitational field and reach the lunar body.The mission will compile a 3D atlas of the lunar surface and map the distribution of elements and minerals.

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NetSol Technologies Inc on Tuesday announced the company that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Ciena Solutions LLC, a leading provider of SAP integration management services headquartered in Los Angeles, California with a branch office in San Ramon, California.

NetSol will acquire Ciena Solutions for combination of cash and restricted stock. Ciena Solutions is profitable and experienced double-digit growth in revenues and profits in the past year.

Commenting on the occasion, of NetSol Technologies Chief Executive Officer Salim Ghauri said the acquisition of Ciena Solutions marks another major milestone in our growth strategy and provides an entry into one of the largest markets for information technology solutions and services within the industry.

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Sindh Minister for Commerce and Industries Rauf Siddiqui has said that the renowned Japanese IT firm DTS would invest 50 million dollar in the Information Technology (IT) Park project, besides providing 1,500 jobs.

“The government is committed to extend all out support to the foreign investors, especially Karachi is open to foreign investors in all sectors,” he said while addressing a foundation stone laying ceremony of the firm at SITE Superhighway, Ahsan Abad on Thursday.

He said the company would invest 50 million dollar in the IT sector of Pakistan in five years. The government is working on a road map of investment plan and with the implementation of the plan, more Japanese investors would attract towards Pakistan, he said.

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Europe’s gravity mission has been bumped to next year because of ongoing technical problems with its launcher.

The arrow-shaped Goce satellite will map tiny variations in the pull of gravity experienced across the world.

The information will give scientists a clearer insight into how the oceans move, and provide a universal reference to measure height anywhere on Earth.

But concerns about the reliability of its Russian rocket mean a lift-off is now unlikely before February.

It is a frustrating delay for the Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (Goce).

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Mobilink coverage of 10,000 locations

Mobilink, Pakistan’s market leader in cellular communication with more than 31 million customers and a part of the Orascom Telecom Group, has crossed the figure of covering over 10,000 locations across the country. It has expanded its footprints to highest number of locations for voice and data than any other operator in Pakistan.

The President and CEO, Mobilink, Zouhair A Khaliq, while breaking the news said, ‘It is a momentous achievement both for the benefit and convenience of our revered customers, who have reposed absolute confidence in our services, as well as for the exceptional efforts of technical and network teams, who have toiled relentlessly to deliver this challenging task have more than 10,000 reasons to rejoice.

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Pakistan telecom industry is ready for the introduction of 3G (third generation) spectrum for telecommunications and this is the most suitable time for its launching owing to low prices of relevant equipment in the international market, said Telenor’s executive vice president, corporate affairs Irfan Wahab Khan on Wednesday.

Speaking at a workshop on “Mobile Number Portability (MNP) to 3G - the development of mobile telecommunication in Pakistan”, Wahab said that introduction of 3G will not only enhance services but would also bring Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).

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