World’s largest container ship leaves Shanghai for Europe
Shanghai: The world’s largest container vessel, the CSCL Globe, set off today on its maiden voyage to Europe from Shanghai, ship owner China Shipping Container Lines (CSCL) said.
The giant 400-metre long, 60-metre wide vessel sailed from the eastern Chinese city’s Yangshan port, the company said in a statement.
The vessel is the first of five 19,100-TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit) container ships that CSCL ordered in 2013 from South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries and was delivered in November, according to CSCL.
It is the world’s “biggest and most advanced” container ship, outstripping international shipping firm Maersk Line’s 18,000-TEU ship in terms of capacity, the firm said, calling it the “A380 of the shipping industry” in a reference to the giant Airbus passenger jet
. If stacked end to end, the 19,100 standard containers it can carry would be more than five times the height of Mount Everest, the statement said.
China’s official Xinhua news agency said the vessel is more energy-efficient and produces fewer emissions than ordinary 10,000-TEU containers, adding that it can carry about 200 million tablet computers at a time.
CSCL earlier released images of the ship docked in the northern port cities of Tianjin and Qingdao last week, where ceremonies were held to mark the ship going into service for CSCL’s Far East-Europe line. (AFP)
Curiosity rover clicks selfie on Mars
Washington: NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has clicked a new selfie near a sandstone outcrop in Gale Crater’s Kimberley region of the Red Planet.
The laser-armed, one-tonne rover used the camera at the end of its arm to take dozens of images which were later combined into a self-portrait.
The site in the background of the selfie features numerous sandstone layers caused by eons of exposure to wind erosion, ABC News reported. A 1.6 centimetre diameter test hole drilled by the rover into the rock ledge is visible in the images.
The view does not include the rover’s arm which took the pictures. Most of the component frames of the mosaic view were taken during the 613th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity’s work on Mars.
After landing inside Gale Crater in August 2012, Curiosity fulfilled in its first year of operations its major science goal of determining whether Mars ever offered environmental conditions favourable for microbial life. (PTI)