Defence GK Questions 2026

Launched by NASA in 1977, Voyager 1 flew past Jupiter and Saturn, then continued outward and has since crossed into interstellar space, making it the farthest human-made object from the earth.

The Chinese mission Chang'e 4 landed on the far side of the Moon in January 2019, the first spacecraft ever to do so, and released the rover Yutu-2.

JAXA stands for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, formed in 2003 by merging three earlier Japanese space bodies, with its headquarters at Tokyo.

The European Space Agency was founded in 1975 by a group of European countries that decided to pool their space work, and its headquarters is in Paris.

Chandrayaan-3 was launched on 14 July 2023 on an LVM3 rocket, and its lander Vikram touched down near the lunar south pole on 23 August 2023, releasing the rover Pragyan.

The Mars Orbiter Mission was launched on 5 November 2013 by a PSLV rocket and was placed in orbit around Mars on 24 September 2014.

India's first satellite was named after the ancient astronomer and mathematician Aryabhata and was launched on 19 April 1975 from a Soviet site, since India did not yet have a launch vehicle of its own.

The Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin circled the earth once aboard Vostok 1 on 12 April 1961 and became the first human being in space, a flight that lasted about one hour and forty eight minutes.

Sputnik 1 was launched on 4 October 1957 and became the first artificial satellite to circle the earth, sending out a simple radio signal that stations across the world could hear.

ISRO was formed on 15 August 1969, taking over the space work that had been carried on since 1962 by the Indian National Committee for Space Research.

NASA is the civilian space agency of the United States, established in 1958 after the launch of Sputnik, with its headquarters at Washington DC.

The Hill Forts of Rajasthan were inscribed in 2013 as a serial site of six forts: Chittorgarh, Kumbhalgarh, Ranthambore, Amber, Jaisalmer and Gagron.

This narrow gauge line in West Bengal, opened in the late nineteenth century and famous for its loops and zig zag reverses as it climbs to Darjeeling, was inscribed in 1999 and became the first railway property of India on the list.

When a country nominates a monument, a city or an archaeological site, ICOMOS studies the file, sends experts to the place and recommends to the World Heritage Committee whether it should be inscribed, referred back or rejected.

Kaziranga National Park lies on the floodplain of the Brahmaputra in Assam and holds the largest population of the Indian one-horned rhinoceros.

The Bhimbetka rock shelters lie in the Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh, in the foothills of the Vindhyan range south of Bhopal, and were inscribed in 2003.

The Historic City of Ahmedabad in Gujarat, founded by Sultan Ahmad Shah in the fifteenth century on the eastern bank of the Sabarmati, was inscribed in 2017 and became the first city in India to enter the World Heritage List as a whole city.

The Ramappa temple stands at Palampet in the Mulugu district of Telangana. It was built in the early thirteenth century under the Kakatiya rulers of Warangal by their general Recharla Rudra, and is named after its sculptor Ramappa, a rare case of a temple carrying its craftsman's name.

Rani ki Vav stands at Patan on the bank of the Saraswati in Gujarat and was built in the eleventh century during the Solanki or Chaulukya period, by tradition as a memorial raised by Queen Udayamati.

This park in Sikkim was inscribed in 2016 under both the natural and the cultural criteria, which makes it India's only mixed site.