CDS GK Questions 2026

The comparison the Minister drew is the part worth memorising: the same allocation stood at around Rs 2.53 lakh crore in 2013-14, which makes option A a real figure but from the wrong year, and therefore the most attractive distractor in the set.

After the earlier goal of Rs 30,000 crore in annual defence exports was met in the previous year, the government fixed a higher goal of Rs 50,000 crore to be reached by 2029.

Supplies went to more than 100 countries, which is why the Defence Minister described the country as moving from being an importer to a trusted global supplier.

El Nino is the warming of surface water in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific. In a normal year the trade winds push warm water westwards towards Australia and Indonesia, and cold water rises along the coast of Peru and Ecuador.

When the government set longer term goals for the space programme in 2023, it named an Indian space station, the Bharatiya Antariksh Station, and an Indian crewed landing on the Moon.

Born at Karnal in Haryana, Kalpana Chawla studied aeronautical engineering, moved to the United States and joined NASA, flying first on the shuttle Columbia in 1997 as a mission specialist.

All Indian orbital launches, including the PSLV, GSLV and LVM3 flights, lift off from Sriharikota on the Andhra Pradesh coast, which has two operational launch pads.

China launched Yang Liwei aboard Shenzhou-5 in October 2003, becoming the third country after the Soviet Union and the United States to send a human into orbit on its own rocket and spacecraft.

The Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth once aboard Vostok 1 on 12 April 1961, becoming the first human being in space.

Vyommitra, a name built from vyom for sky and mitra for friend, is a half-humanoid robot developed by ISRO to fly on an uncrewed Gaganyaan mission.

The Human Space Flight Centre, set up in 2019 as the ISRO centre responsible for the Gaganyaan programme, works from Bengaluru, which is also the location of the ISRO headquarters, the U R Rao Satellite Centre and the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network.

The crew module is the pressurised double walled cabin where the astronauts live, and it is the only part that returns to Earth, protected by a heat shield and lowered by parachutes.

TV-D1, the first test vehicle abort mission, was launched from Sriharikota on 21 October 2023.

Rakesh Sharma flew on Soyuz T-11, launched from Baikonur on 2 April 1984, and docked with the Soviet space station Salyut 7.

Rakesh Sharma, then a Squadron Leader in the Indian Air Force, became the first Indian in space on 3 April 1984.

Gaganyaan will fly on the LVM3, the heaviest Indian launch vehicle, modified and certified for carrying human beings and then written as HLVM3.

That instrument belonged to Chandrayaan 1, the lunar mission of 2008, and it was the one whose data confirmed water molecules on the Moon.

After a journey of about ten months the spacecraft fired its engine and was captured by the gravity of Mars on that day.

The Mars Orbiter Mission lifted off on 5 November 2013 on this flight of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.

Chandrayaan 3 was deliberately built without one, because the orbiter of Chandrayaan 2 was still healthy in lunar orbit and could relay the lander's signals to the Earth.