Daily Current Affairs

Ahead of Gaganyaan, ISRO CE 20 engine already has a notable legacy (GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)

Why in news?

• Recently, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had successfully completed human-rating the CE-20 rocket engine ahead of its use to launch an Indian astronaut to space onboard an Indian rocket.

 

CE-20:

• The CE-20 is an indigenous cryogenic engine ISRO developed to use with the GSLV Mk III, now called the LVM-3, launch vehicle.
• It represents an improvement on the CE-7.5 cryogenic engine and is instrumental to ISRO successfully realising its human spaceflight, a.k.a. Gaganyaan, mission.

 

Fuels:

• Engineers prefer to use liquid fuels for rocket motors because they are less bulky and flow better than solid fuels. Using hydrogen as fuel is also desirable because when it is combusted, it generates the highest exhaust velocity.
• For example, combusting hydrogen with oxygen as the oxidiser results in an exhaust velocity of 4.5 km/s whereas that produced by unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide, the combination used by the second stage of the PSLV rocket, e.g.  is around 3.4 km/s. This is why hydrogen is a desirable fuel for rocket motors.

 

Cryogenic engines:

• Hydrogen in liquid form is not well-behaved: it needs to be maintained at -253 degrees C (and the liquid oxygen at -184 degrees C) and leaks very easily. Engineers need special equipment to store and transport liquid hydrogen and special engines that can use it to power a rocket. These are cryogenic engines.

• ISRO has used three cryogenic engines over the years: KVD-1, CE-7.5, and CE-20. The last two are India-made, although the design of the CE-7.5 is based on the KVD-1, which Russia (as the Soviet Union) supplied to India in the early 1980s.
• The GSLV Mk II launch vehicle uses CE-7.5 engines to power the third stage of its ascent.

 

How cryogenic engine works?

• The operation of a cryogenic engine requires a cryopump, a device to trap and cool the hydrogen and oxygen to liquid form; special storage tanks; and turbopumps to move the cooled fuel and oxidiser to the engine.
• The CE-7.5 engine uses the staged-combustion cycle. Here, a small amount of the fuel is combusted in a pre-burner. The resulting heat is used to drive the turbine that powers the turbopump.
• Once the turbopump has brought the rest of the fuel and oxidiser to the combustion chamber, the hydrogen is combusted to power the main engine plus two vernier thrusters, smaller engines that tweak the rocket’s speed and orientation once it’s in flight. The exhaust from the pre-burner is also routed to the combustion chamber.
• The CE-20 engine uses the gas-generator cycle, which discards the exhaust from the pre-burner instead of sending it to the combustion chamber. This reduces fuel efficiency but, importantly for ISRO, makes the CE-20 engine easier to build and test.
• ISRO has also dropped its vernier thrusters in favour of allowing the engine’s nozzle to make small rotations to adjust the rocket’s flight path.
• As a result, while the CE-7.5 engine is lighter and sports higher fuel-use efficiency, the CE-20 engine achieves a higher maximum thrust (~200 kilonewton v. 73.5 kilonewton) with a shorter burn duration.

 

Engine test:

• Since 2011, NASA’s Commercial Crew Programme has required the probability of mission loss when the launch vehicle is ascending or descending to be lower than 1/500 (or 0.2%).
• Obviously the agency can’t conduct so many test flights before a launch, but it can determine the contributions of different mission components to the overall failure rate and test those components to ensure their minimum reliability is above the corresponding limit. The engine test is one example of such a qualifying exercise.
• The CE-20 engines had been hot-fire tested for a cumulative “8,810 seconds against the minimum human rating qualification standard requirement of 6,350 seconds”. In a cold-flow test, fluids flow through the engine but there’s no combustion or exhaust, whereas there is in a hot-fire test.)
• Hot-fire tests of this duration will ensure the engine’s performance is within acceptable limits in conditions mimicking those that will transpire during the actual mission.

 

Formidable legacy:

• Aside from being highly performant, CE-20 engine is also a testament of ISRO’s accomplishments after the U.S.’s sanctions against India in the 1980s.
• Former ISRO chairman U.R. Rao wrote in his book India’s Rise as a Space Power that when NASA was developing a cryogenic engine for its Saturn rockets, it identified 58 types of failure, and that Japan had to conduct more than 500 tests to first qualify its LE-7 engine.
• LVM-3 rockets using the CE-20 in the third stage;  where the first stage comprises two solid-fuel boosters and the second stage, two liquid-fuelled Vikas 2 engines have already launched the Chandrayaan-2 and -3 missions and the 5.8-tonne payload of the commercial OneWeb mission in 2022.

 

Can the IMEC address the Red Sea crisis?

(GS Paper 2, International Relation)

Why in news?

• As the Red Sea crisis enters its fourth month, global supply chains are increasingly grappling with inflated freights, delayed vessel schedules, and product shortages.
• It has once again brought to the fore the vulnerabilities of global supply chains, highlighting the need to revisit alternate routes for global trade.

Why is the Red Sea route important?

• The Red Sea owes its strategic importance for global trade to the Bab el-Mandab Strait which lies between Yemen and Djibouti. It is one of the world’s busiest cargo and oil transit points with almost 12% of international merchandise trade passing through it.
• An immediate consequence of the Red Sea conflict has been that major container and oil carriers have been forced to re-route shipments via the Cape of Good Hope.
• The re-routing has led to rising ocean freight, inflated insurance costs, and longer voyage times leading to delays and shortage of products. It has also driven up transportation costs.
• The higher shipping costs will be passed onto consumers in the form of increased commodity prices.

 

How has it affected India?

• India’s trade with European and North African countries flows entirely through the Red Sea route which is almost 24% of its exports and 14% of its imports.
• In the year 2022-23, India’s bilateral trade with Europe and North Africa stood at $189 billion and $15 billion respectively. The rising fears among traders have already seen a drop in Indian shipments.
• As per the Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO), rising threats have prompted Indian exporters to hold back around 25% of their cargo ships transitioning through the Red Sea.
• As global supply chains are battling delayed shipments and rising costs, China is actively projecting China-Europe freight trains, which are part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), as an alternate route.

 

What about the IMEC?

• The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), which was announced during the G-20 summit in 2023, is another alternative which is not receiving much attention.
• Part of the problem is that apart from the MoUs, there have not been any investments or operations regarding the corridor.
• Furthermore, the Israel-Palestine conflict has put a pause on the normalisation of Arab-Israel relations which is a key element of the multi-nation initiative.
• Another major challenge is the vulnerability of the Strait of Hormuz. The entire trade of the IMEC architecture flows through the Strait of Hormuz and with Iran’s proximity and control over the strait, the risk of disruptions remain very high.
• Some experts argue that the Strait of Hormuz problem can be avoided by including Oman in the IMEC architecture and keeping the supply chain away from Iran’s reach.
• However, that would mean further delays, as new ports and railway links will have to be developed across Oman connecting it to Saudi Arabia.

 

How can the IMEC be made viable?

• An empirical study on the economic benefits of the corridor needs to be conducted. The corridor is estimated to cut the journey time from India to Europe by 40% and slash transit costs by 30%.
• However, there are speculations that multiple handling of cargo and multi-nation transit would increase carriage and compliance costs. Therefore, it is critical to quantify the economic advantages of the corridor to attract more stakeholders.
• A robust financial framework needs to be in place. Since there are no binding financial commitments on any of the signatories of the corridor, investments will have to be attracted from governments, international organisations, and private sector entities.
• A comprehensive multi-nation operational framework is needed. As the corridor involves facilitating trade across different legal systems, a multi-national framework is necessary. A forum for the corridor needs to be constituted to undertake the aforementioned activities.

 

Why were surrogacy rules modified?

(GS Paper 2, Governance)

Why in news?

• The Union government recently modified the Surrogacy (Regulation) Rules, 2022, to permit married couples to use donor eggs or donor sperm for surrogacy, a move that provided a big relief to those with medical complications.

 

Details:

• This revoked a previous amendment made in March 2023 that banned the use of such donor gametes.
• The modification in the surrogacy rules came after Additional Solicitor General Aishwarya Bhati apprised the Supreme Court that the government was considering changes in the amendment brought in 2023 to allow married couples to use donor gametes for surrogacy in case they suffered from medical ailments that made it difficult to conceive.

 

What does the new amendment state?

• On March 14 2023, Form 2 (Consent of the Surrogate Mother and Agreement for Surrogacy) of the Surrogacy Rules read with Rule 7 was amended to stipulate that donor eggs could not be used for gestational surrogacy of an intending couple.
• This has now been amended by a notification of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare allowing married couples to use a donor gamete on the condition that a District Magistrate Board certifies that either the husband or the wife suffers from a medical condition.
• However, the notification outlines that the child to be born through surrogacy must have at least one gamete from the intending parents.
• This implies that a married couple where both partners are unable to use their gametes due to an existing medical condition cannot opt for surrogacy.  The change is however not applicable to widowed or divorced women.

 

What was the petition before the Supreme Court?

• The 2023 amendment was challenged before the Supreme Court by a woman suffering from the Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser (MRKH) Syndrome. Medical board records reflected she was unable to produce her eggs due to absent ovaries or a uterus.
• The petition contended that the amendment violated a woman’s right to parenthood and contradicted Sections 2(r) and 4 of the Surrogacy Act, 2021 (2021 Act) which recognised the situation when a medical condition would require a couple to opt for gestational surrogacy to become parents.
• It was also pointed out that the petitioner had begun the surrogacy process months before the amendment, which cannot be implemented retrospectively.
• The Centre, on the contrary, argued that the use of donor eggs was exempted since surrogacy cannot be availed of under existing laws unless the child is “genetically related” to the intending couple.

 

SC Judgement:

• Staying the operation of the law, a bench of Justices B.V. Nagarathna and Ujjal Bhuyan highlighted that it prevents intending couples from achieving parenthood through surrogacy which is prima facie contrary to the objective of the parent law, the 2021 Act.
• The court also recognised that the law permitting gestational surrogacy was “woman-centric” as it was a woman’s choice to have a surrogate child owing to existing medical or congenital conditions.
• Such conditions included the “absence of a uterus or repeatedly failed pregnancies, multiple pregnancies or an illness which makes it impossible for her to carry a pregnancy to term or would make the pregnancy life-threatening”.
• Agreeing with the petitioner’s submissions, the court acknowledged that Rule 14(a) specifically recognises the absence of a uterus or any allied condition as a medical indication necessitating gestational surrogacy.

 

Can single women avail of the same?

• The regulatory change is however not applicable for single women as it specifies that a widow or a divorcee undergoing surrogacy must use self-eggs and donor sperm. This comes even after questions are being raised in Indian courts over the exclusion of single women from using surrogacy to have children and the resultant discrimination.
• A petition has been filed in the Delhi High Court by a 44-year-old unmarried woman challenging provisions of the 2021 Act on the ground that the restrictions are violative of her fundamental rights under Articles 14 (right to equality) and 21 (right to life) of the Constitution.
• Questioning the association of marital status with the eligibility for surrogacy, the petitioner has pointed out that at her age, the use of donor eggs is recommended by medical practitioners.
• To be genetically connected, the petitioner’s brother has consented to donate his male gametes, the court was told. Experts have also criticised the restrictions on access to surrogacy by single persons, live-in couples, and LGBTQ couples.