Whatsapp 93125-11015 For Details
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday announced that the point where the Vikram lander of Chandrayaan-3 landed will be called ‘Shiv Shakti’, and the point where Chandrayaan-2 left its footprint on the lunar surface will be called ‘Tiranga’.
In shiv, there is resolution for the welfare of humanity, and shakti gives us strength to fulfil those resolutions. This ‘Shiv Shakti Point’ of the moon also gives a sense of connection with Himalaya to Kanniyakumari,” Mr. Modi said, addressing scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Telemetry Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bengaluru after his return from Greece.
He added that the ‘Tiranga point’ will “remind us that failure is not the end”. The Prime Minister also announced that August 23, the day the lander made its historic soft-landing, will be commemorated as National Space Day.
National Space Day will celebrate the spirit of science, technology and innovation, and inspire us for an eternity.
Meanwhile, ISRO Chairman S. Somanath said that the Pragyan rover has travelled about 12 metres, and is expected to take pictures of the Vikram lander.
Now the rover has already moved 12 metres, and it is almost out of the field of view. It will turn in the day today and look at the lander and take more pictures, while briefing the Prime Minister on the findings and progress of the mission.
News
IAF banking on indigenous fighter aircraft to prevent numbers going below current level (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 3, Defence)
The Indian Air Force (IAF), which has put its weight behind the indigenous light combat aircraft (LCA), is hoping for faster deliveries and gearing up to place additional orders.
The move is to arrest the IAF’s fighter strength from falling further from the current 31 squadrons, in the medium term. By 2030, the IAF would have 32 or 33 fighter squadrons and, by 2040, 35 or 36 if the indigenous fighters meet the induction timeline. The IAF has a sanctioned strength of 42 squadrons.
An important lesson from the LCA programme is that support equipment is as important as the platform, if not more.
LCA trainers are urgently required. We are expecting to receive eight LCA trainers by the end of this financial year.
The IAF has inducted 32 LCA-Mk jets from earlier orders, and deliveries of the 83 LCA-Mk1A ordered in 2021 are scheduled to begin in February 2024. Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL) officials said that the delivery of LCA trainers would be on track.
The IAF is looking to order an additional 90 LCA-Mk1A fighter jets or four squadrons. The additional jets are likely to be inducted from 2027-28 till 2031-32 by which time, induction of the larger and more capable LCA-Mk2 is expected to begin.
This is on the basis that the HAL would ramp up the production rate to 24 aircraft a year and the additional order will ensure that assembly lines keep running before the LCA-Mk2 production goes into full swing. The HAL has already set up two additional assembly lines.
Asian Development Bank, Centre to open climate change and health centre in Delhi (Page no. 7)
(GS Paper 2, International Organisation)
Having bagged the first WHO Centre for Global Traditional Medicine, to be set up in Gujarat, India is now all set to open a climate change and health hub in New Delhi in partnership with the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
The World Health Organization (WHO) outpost in Jamnagar will aim to provide leadership on global health matters pertaining to traditional medicine; ensure the quality, safety, efficacy, accessibility, and rational use of traditional medicine; develop norms, standards, and guidelines in relevant technical areas; and develop tools and methodologies for data collection and analytics.
Climate change affects all of us and this centre will give us the opportunity to have different partners discussing this important issue and learning from each other.
The world is facing new challenges, and we must pool in our resources, learning and innovations to tackle the fall-out of this change in a timely manner.
In its recently released G-20 outcome document, India also noted that climate change will continue to drive health emergencies, including the emergence and re-emergence of infectious diseases, and by increasing the severity and frequency of natural disasters, thereby threatening to overwhelm health systems’ ability to deliver essential services.
What Terai tigers eat and what it tells about the habitat (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
The dung of tigers has helped a team of scientists at the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) understand the prey selection patterns of the striped feline in the Indian part of the Terai-Arc Landscape, or TAL.
The faeces also helped the scientists gather information about the hotspots of conflicts related to livestock predation across 15,000 sq. km of the animal’s habitat along the foothills of the Himalayas.
The assessment of the food habits of the tiger (Panthera tigris) was published in the latest edition of the Journal of Mammalogy, a peer-reviewed international publication.
The authors of the study are Suvankar Biswas, Shrewshree Kumar, Meghna Bandhopadhyay, Shiv Kumar Patel, Salvador Lyngdoh, Bivash Pandav, and Samrat Mondol. Dr. Biswas is also associated with the World Wide Fund for Nature-India.
The scientists chose the 900-km linear stretch of the TAL, recognised as one of the most productive habitats on the subcontinent, for the study between November 2014 and December 2020.
The globally important tiger conservation landscape is characterised by a mosaic of forests and grasslands covering both protected areas and others.
Overall, the TAL represents three major habitat types — Shivalik covering parts of the lower Himalayas, Bhabar covering the foothills of the lower Himalayas marked by pebbles and boulders, and Terai comprising the lowland region below the Himalayan foothills and north of the Indo-Gangetic plains covering the entire Uttar Pradesh, southern parts of Uttarakhand, and Bihar.
About 22% of the wild tiger population in India is found across the TAL, living amid some of the highest human and livestock densities on the subcontinent.
The landscape also has a high mammalian diversity with herbivores such as gaur, nilgai, sambar, northern swamp deer, wild pig, chital and goral, some primates, carnivores such as leopard, wild dog, and hyena apart from the tiger, and omnivores including the sloth bear and Asiatic black bear.
Tangible heritage is the history and identity of a nation, says Modi (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 1, Culture)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagged the importance of restitution of cultural property, observing that everyone has the right to access and enjoy their cultural heritage.
Addressing the G-20 Culture Ministers’ meeting here through videoconferencing, Mr. Modi said since 2014, India had brought back hundreds of such artefacts which showcased the glory of its ancient civilisation.
He said tangible heritage not only had material value but was also the history and identity of a nation. Everyone had the right to access and enjoy his or her cultural heritage. “The issue of restitution of cultural property is an important one. Mr. Modi commended the efforts of the G-20 culture delegates towards preserving “living heritage” as well.
After all, cultural heritage is not just what is cast in stone. It is also the traditions, customs and festivals that are handed down the generations. I am confident that your efforts will foster sustainable practices and lifestyles.
Underlining that heritage was a vital asset for economic growth and diversification, he added, “India takes pride in its 2,000-year-old craft heritage, with nearly 3,000 unique arts and crafts.
Mr. Modi said that efforts of G-20 nations towards promoting cultural and creative industries held profound significance as they would facilitate inclusive economic development and support creativity and innovation.
World
NASA and SpaceX crew of four blast off to ISS (Page no. 10)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
NASA and SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft blasted off carrying four astronauts to the International Space Station.
The Crew-7 mission is commanded by American Jasmin Moghbeli and includes Andreas Mogensen of Denmark, Satoshi Furukawa of Japan and Konstantin Borisov of Russia.
The Dragon spacecraft carried by a Falcon 9 rocket lifted from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, in front of around 10,000 people gathered to watch the launch.
Cheers could be heard in the mission control room soon after the Dragon craft separated from the Falcon 9 rocket with the crew in orbit.
We may have four crew members on board from four different nations... but we’re a united team with a common mission,” Ms. Moghbeli said after the separation.
The launch was pushed back to Saturday to give engineers an extra day to review a component of the Crew Dragon capsule’s environmental control and life support system, NASA said in a blog post. It is the first space mission for both Ms. Moghbeli and Mr. Borisov.
Science
Tropical forests may be getting too hot for photosynthesis (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 3, Environment)
A small percentage of leaves on trees in tropical forests may be approaching the maximum temperature threshold for photosynthesis to work, suggests a study published in Nature.
An estimated 0.01% of all leaves currently surpass this critical temperature but there are uncertainties in the range of potentially critical temperatures in tropical trees.
Modelling suggests that tropical forests can withstand up to a 3.9-degree C increase over current air temperatures before a potential tipping point, therefore action is needed to protect the fate of tropical forests under future climate change.
But the uncertainty in the plasticity and range of critical temperature in tropical trees and the effect of leaf death on tree death could drastically change this prediction.
The 4-degree C estimate is within the ‘worst-case scenario’ of climate change predictions for tropical forests and therefore it is still within our power to decide the fate of these critical realms of carbon, water and biodiversity.
Recent studies have indicated a resilience of tropical forests to how warming impacts carbon uptake and long-term drought.
However, the critical temperature acts as an absolute upper limit and it seems that, if our assumptions in the model are correct, crossing such a threshold is within the range of our most pessimistic future climate change scenarios.
Missed childhood TB cases impede achieving 2025 goal (Page no. 11)
(GS Paper 2, Health)
With childhood TB continuing to remain a “staggering problem” in India, “eliminating” TB by 2025 might be extremely challenging.
Compared with adults, children are more vulnerable to acquiring TB infection and developing the disease. Globally, TB is now regarded as the leading cause of death from infectious diseases for children of all ages.
As per a study that looked at 31 studies, the estimated mortality of children with TB who fail to receive treatment is about 22%; the case fatality ratio in children less than five years is 43%.
According to the WHO, there are critical gaps in detecting TB cases among children despite significant progress and greater understanding of the challenges faced in addressing TB in children.
For instance, globally, at least 1.2 million children aged less than 15 years fall ill with TB every year, and around 67 million children get infected, placing them at the risk of developing TB disease at a later date.
However, 56% of the 1.2 million children who develop TB annually are not detected, says an October 2022 paper. As per the 2022 WHO global TB report, last year, children aged less than 15 years across the world accounted for 11% of the total estimated incident TB cases.
Notwithstanding the 56% estimated TB detection gap in children globally, India contributes nearly one-third to the global childhood TB caseload.
According to the 2022 paediatric TB management guidelines for India, nearly 0.34 million children aged less than 15 years are estimated to get TB disease every year; children in this age group in India are estimated to contribute about 13% of the TB caseload. Even as the number of TB cases being detected and notified in India continued to increase from 85,780 in 2015 to 24,22,121 in 2022, at around 6%, children constituted only a minor fraction of the total annual cases notified during the same period. This points to a “gap of 4-5% in total notification against the estimated incidence.
FAQ
After Chandrayaan-3, what are ISRO’s plans? (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
The Chandrayaan-3 lander touched down on the moon’s surface, in the south polar region. The landing followed a 19-minute sequence in which the spacecraft used its engines, thrusters, and a suite of sensors to guide itself from an altitude of around 30 km and a speed of 1.7 km/s down to the ground.
The success made India the fourth country to have soft-landed a robotic instrument on the moon and the first to have done so in the moon’s south polar region.
This elite stature also boosts other countries’ confidence in the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which built, launched, and now operates the Chandrayaan-3 instruments.
ISRO’s activities span conducting research, developing satellite systems, working with autonomous bodies, producing rockets (from working with vendors who supply various components to design, testing, integration, and launch), maintaining satellite-tracking infrastructure, operating existing satellites, mitigating orbital debris, etc.
Some of its more prominent focus areas at the moment are —‘Gaganyaan’, the human spaceflight mission wherein a group of astronauts are being trained as ISRO continues a series of tests of a modified Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (LVM-3) rocket before it can be certified to be safe to carry humans; a Reusable Launch Vehicle Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD) — a launch vehicle that can be used for multiple missions, unlike the existing rockets, each of which can be used only for one mission, currently undergoing tests; SCE-200 — a powerful engine that uses highly refined kerosene as the fuel and liquid oxygen as the oxidiser, to power the next generation of ISRO rockets, currently undergoing tests; and a Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) — a rocket smaller than the workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) to carry lighter satellites into low-earth orbit with a shorter turnaround time between launches, currently undergoing developmental flights.
Why was a 40% duty imposed on onion exports? (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
In order to increase the availability of onions in the market, especially ahead of the upcoming festive season, the government on August 19 imposed a 40% duty on the export of onions until the end of the year.
Elaborating on the rationale behind the move, Rohit Kumar Singh, Secretary at the Department of Consumer Affairs, said that a “sharp rise” in its exports had been observed in the recent past.
Besides imposing this duty, the government will also be offloading its onion stocks in various wholesale markets to reduce retail prices.
As per the Department of Consumer Affairs’ Price Monitoring Division, on August 25, the (all-India) daily average retail price of onions was 25% higher on a year-on-year basis, at ₹32.6/kg.
The two measures are aimed at infusing stocks into the market to stabilise prices and mitigate the demand-supply mismatch.
The chain of events goes back to February, which experienced higher-than-normal temperatures. This was followed by unseasonal rainfall between late March and early-April. The two climatic occurrences corresponded with the growth cycle of the onion crop.
Onion crops are grown in India across three seasons, namely kharif, late kharif and rabi. The kharif crop is planted around July-August and is harvested between October and December; the late kharif is sown between October and November and harvested between January and March. Rabi is harvested around end of March to May and planted between December and January.
Maharashtra is the largest onion-producing State, contributing 39% of the overall production, followed by Madhya Pradesh at 17%.
Other major onion-growing States include Karnataka, Gujarat, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana and Telangana.
The rabi crop (of onions) contributes the most to production in a calendar year — market intelligence firm CRISIL’s report earlier this month pegged this at 70%.
Business
‘Chandrayaan-3 opens up avenues for Indian firms in aerospace sector’ (Page no. 12)
(GS Paper 3, Economy)
Chakradhara Aerospace and Cargo Private Limited (CACPL) in Coimbatore had been a part of the Chandrayaan-3 mission.
With its aerospace division, started in 2004, the firm works with ISRO and DRDO, and has been part of several critical projects. Director Jaidev Jayavarthanavelu highlights the opportunities that have opened up following the success of Chandrayaan-3. Edited excerpts:
The success of Chandrayaan-3 holds immense significance for the Indian aerospace community and industry.
The world’s increasing reliance on Indian products and systems to meet their aerospace needs will undoubtedly follow this accomplishment.
Considering this vibrant landscape, CACPL anticipates a sustained upswing in demand for its products and expertise throughout the 2024 fiscal and beyond.
Micro, small and medium-scale enterprises (MSMEs) have the potential to play a pivotal role by providing precision machining of parts as sub-tier suppliers for industries catering to ISRO and aerospace companies.
Support from entities such as the CODISSIA Defence Innovation and Atal Incubation Centre in Coimbatore can help MSMEs venture into the aerospace sector supplier realm.
The company provided the accelerometer for vibration monitoring and motors for actuation in the ground stage.