Defence GK Questions 2026

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.

The Hoysalas ruled southern Karnataka from Belur and Dwarasamudra, today's Halebidu, and their temples are unmistakable: a raised star shaped platform called the jagati, shrines on a stellate plan, soft chloritic schist or soapstone that allowed jewellery and hair to be carved in minute detail, lathe turned pillars, and bands…

The Konark Sun Temple in Odisha was raised in the thirteenth century by Narasimhadeva I. The plan is the chariot of Surya: a high platform carrying twelve pairs of carved stone wheels drawn by seven horses.

Pattadakal on the Malaprabha was a coronation city of the Chalukyas of Badami, and its temples stand side by side in both idioms: the Papanatha and Galaganatha temples carry curving Nagara towers, while the Virupaksha temple, built by queen Lokamahadevi to mark Vikramaditya II's victory over the Pallavas, and the…

Cave 16 at Ellora, the Kailasa temple, was cut for the Rashtrakuta king Krishna I in the eighth century.

In the Nagara style of north India the tower over the garbhagriha is the shikhara.

The Brihadeshwara or Rajarajeshwara temple at Thanjavur was completed about 1010 CE by Raja Raja I. Its vimana rises in shrinking storeys to over sixty metres and is crowned by a single huge capstone, the whole structure is of granite, and the courtyard holds one of the largest monolithic Nandi…

The Kanheri caves are cut into a basalt hill inside the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai.

The twin hills of Udayagiri and Khandagiri stand near Bhubaneswar and hold Jain rock-cut cells cut for monks in the first century BCE.

Elephanta, on Gharapuri island near Mumbai, is a Shaivite rock-cut group whose panels tell Shiva stories: the Trimurti Sadashiva, Ardhanarishvara, Gangadhara, the marriage of Shiva and Parvati and Shiva as Nataraja.

Hampi on the Tungabhadra in Karnataka was the capital of the Vijayanagara empire, and its Virupaksha, Vittala and Hazara Rama temples are Dravidian work of the most elaborate kind: walled enclosures, towering gopurams, pillared kalyana mandapas, the famous stone chariot and the musical pillars.

The garbhagriha, the womb house, is the small square windowless cell that holds the image of the presiding deity. Every other part of a temple is added around it: the tower rises over it, the hall stands in front of it and the circumambulatory passage runs around it.

The original capital at Sarnath rests on an inverted lotus shaped like a bell, and that part was deliberately omitted from the State Emblem, which begins at the abacus.