CDS GK Questions 2026

Under the reforms of 2020 and the Indian Space Policy of 2023, the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre is the single-window autonomous body that authorises, promotes, hand-holds and supervises the space activities of non-government entities, and that permits them to use the facilities of the Department of Space.

Antrix Corporation Limited was set up in 1992 at Bengaluru as a wholly government-owned company under the Department of Space, to market the products and services of the Indian space programme abroad, including launch services, satellite capacity and remote sensing data.

Agnibaan SOrTeD, flown by Agnikul Cosmos of Chennai in 2024, carried the Agnilet engine, a semi-cryogenic engine printed as a single piece, and it lifted off from a launch pad the company had built for itself at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre.

Skyroot Aerospace named the maiden flight of Vikram-S Mission Prarambh, a Sanskrit word meaning beginning, because it was the first flight by a private Indian rocket.

Vikram-S was built by Skyroot Aerospace of Hyderabad and flew a sub-orbital mission from Sriharikota in November 2022 under the name Mission Prarambh, which means beginning.

NewSpace India Limited was incorporated in 2019 as a public sector undertaking under the Department of Space, with its registered office at Bengaluru.

The Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre, IN-SPACe, is an autonomous body under the Department of Space with its headquarters at Ahmedabad in Gujarat, the city where India's space programme itself began at the Physical Research Laboratory founded by Vikram Sarabhai.

The Leopold matrix is the best known of the matrix methods: the activities of a project are set along one axis and the components of the environment along the other, and each cell where an activity meets a component is marked for the magnitude and the importance of the impact.

A rapid assessment is based on baseline data collected over a single season other than the monsoon, which allows the study to be completed quickly, while a comprehensive assessment collects data over all the seasons of a full year and therefore captures seasonal variation in air quality, water flow and…

The tribunal was created by the National Green Tribunal Act of 2010, its principal bench sits at New Delhi, and it hears appeals against the grant or refusal of environmental clearance as well as disputes under other environmental laws.

For a Category A project, prior environmental clearance from the central government is compulsory by the very fact of its listing in the schedule, so there is nothing for a screening stage to decide and the process begins at scoping.

The notification of 2006 makes the State Pollution Control Board, or the pollution control committee in a union territory, responsible for conducting the public hearing at or near the site of the project, for recording the proceedings and for sending that record to the appraisal committee.

Scoping is the stage at which the Expert Appraisal Committee, or the state committee for a Category B1 project, determines the Terms of Reference: the detailed list of issues, study area, seasons of data and specific concerns that the assessment must address.

Screening comes first and decides whether a Category B project needs a full assessment, making it B1, or does not, making it B2.

Under the notification of 2006, a Category A project is appraised by the Expert Appraisal Committee constituted at the centre, and the ministry grants or refuses the prior environmental clearance on that committee's recommendation.

The EIA Notification of 2006 replaced the earlier notification of 1994 and reorganised the whole clearance process, chiefly by dividing projects into Category A, appraised and cleared at the central level, and Category B, appraised and cleared at the state level, and by laying down the four stages of screening…

Section 3 of that Act gives the central government power to take all measures it thinks necessary to protect and improve the quality of the environment, and the EIA Notifications of 1994 and 2006 were both issued under it.

The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, which came into force in 1970, required every agency of the American federal government to prepare a statement of the environmental effects of any major action it proposed, and that requirement is taken as the beginning of environmental impact assessment as a legal…

Article 100(3) of the Constitution lays down that the quorum to constitute a sitting of either House shall be one-tenth of the total number of members of that House, and the presiding officer is counted in that one-tenth.

A policy cut motion asks that the amount of the demand be reduced to one rupee, which amounts to a complete rejection of the policy underlying the demand, and the member who moves it may propose an alternative policy.