Science & Technology Mixed Quiz: Set 5

The correct answer is B, ISRO. Vyommitra is a half-humanoid robot built by the Indian Space Research Organisation and shown to the public in January 2020. Its name joins the Sanskrit words vyoma, meaning sky or space, and mitra, meaning friend. The robot is meant to ride on an uncrewed test flight of the Gaganyaan human spaceflight programme, where it will sit in the crew seat, work the panels, monitor the cabin and speak with the ground station, so that engineers learn how a crew module behaves before astronauts fly in it. Option A is wrong because C-DAC in Pune builds the PARAM series of supercomputers. Option C is wrong because the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai does basic research in physics and mathematics. Option D is wrong because the DRDO develops missiles, radars and other defence systems. Exam tip: Gaganyaan and Vyommitra belong to ISRO, PARAM to C-DAC.

The correct answer is D, 1984. Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma flew in April 1984 aboard the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz T-11 as part of a joint programme between the Soviet Union and India, and spent about eight days aboard the Salyut 7 space station. He thus became the first Indian to travel into space. He is remembered for his reply when the Prime Minister asked how India looked from up there, and he was awarded the Ashoka Chakra.

Options A, B and C give 1981, 1982 and 1983, all near years placed there to see whether the date is firmly held. Fix the year by tying it to two other facts of the same decade: India launched its own satellite Aryabhata in 1975 and put Rohini in orbit with an Indian rocket in 1980, and Rakesh Sharma flew four years after that. The second Indian origin astronauts, Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams, flew with the American programme much later.

The correct answer is B, to measure the vertical temperature profile of the lunar regolith. ChaSTE was carried on the Vikram lander of Chandrayaan-3. It has a probe fitted with a set of temperature sensors, which was pushed into the lunar soil to a depth of about ten centimetres near the south polar region. From its readings scientists can see how heat moves through the top layer of the Moon, which tells them about the thermal properties of the soil at a place never measured before.

Option A, the geological composition, was the task of the two instruments on the Pragyan rover, which used alpha particles and a laser to find the elements in the soil. Option C is wrong because the Moon has only an extremely thin envelope of gas rather than an atmosphere with measurable pressure of the usual kind. Option D, the magnetic field, was not the aim of ChaSTE; the lander instead carried instruments to record moonquakes and to study the plasma near the surface.

The correct answer is C, National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA is the civilian space agency of the United States, established in 1958 after the launch of Sputnik, with its headquarters at Washington DC. It grew out of an older body for aeronautical research, which is why aeronautics appears in the name before space. Its famous programmes include Apollo, which landed humans on the Moon, the Space Shuttle, the Hubble and James Webb telescopes, the Mars rovers and the Artemis programme.

Option A rearranges the words into Agency of Space Administration, which is not the official name. Option B replaces National with Navigational, a word that belongs to satellite navigation rather than to the agency. Option D is the closest trap because it ends with Agency instead of Administration; the last word of the name is Administration, and getting that single word right is what the question tests.

The correct answer is B, Yuri Gagarin. 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. The day is observed every year as the International Day of Human Space Flight. Valentina Tereshkova of the same country became the first woman in space in 1963.

Option A, Neil Armstrong, was the first person to set foot on the Moon, in July 1969, which is a different first. Option C, Alan Shepard, was the first American in space, a few weeks after Gagarin, and later walked on the Moon with Apollo 14. Option D, Alexei Leonov, made the first walk in space outside a spacecraft in 1965. All four are genuine names, so the exact first must be remembered.

The correct answer is D, 1.6 W/kg. The Specific Absorption Rate measures how much radio energy from a handset the body takes in, in watts per kilogram of tissue. From 1 September 2012 the Department of Telecommunications made 1.6 W/kg, averaged over one gram of human tissue, the limit for every new mobile handset design sold in India. Before that India followed the older figure of 2.0 W/kg averaged over ten grams. The rules also require the SAR value to be printed on the handset and its box, and a buyer can check it by dialling a code given by the maker. India's limit matches the standard used in the United States. Option A is wrong because 1.8 W/kg is not a prescribed limit anywhere. Option B is wrong because 2.1 W/kg is not a SAR standard. Option C is wrong because 2.2 W/kg is only a distractor. Exam tip: India's SAR limit is 1.6 W/kg over 1 gram of tissue, in force from 1 September 2012.

The correct answer is B, Sindhu Netra Satellite. Sindhu Netra was developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation and was placed in orbit in February 2021 by the PSLV-C51 flight, the same flight whose main payload was the Amazonia-1 satellite of Brazil. The satellite is meant to watch shipping in the Indian Ocean Region and to help identify warships and merchant vessels moving through those waters, which supports maritime awareness for the armed forces.

Option A, the Satish Dhawan Satellite, was also aboard the same PSLV-C51 flight, but it was a small satellite built by a private Indian team and is not a surveillance satellite. Options C and D, Sindhu Durga and Sri Shakti, are invented names that sound plausible beside the correct one. Remember the pairing of PSLV-C51 with Amazonia-1 as its main payload and Sindhu Netra among the rideshare satellites.

The correct answer is D, Ability. Bias in an artificial intelligence system is traced to three sources, the data it learns from, the algorithm that learns, and the people who build and use it; ability is not one of them, because the skill of a model is a measure of how well it performs, not a place where unfairness enters. Data bias appears when the training set leaves out or under-represents a group, as with a face recognition system trained mostly on one kind of face. Algorithmic bias comes from the choices made in designing a model, such as the features it is allowed to use. Human bias enters through labelling, sampling and the assumptions of the team. Options A, B and C are therefore wrong answers to this question because each one is a genuine source of bias. Exam tip: remember data, algorithm and people as the three sources of AI bias.

The correct answer is C, Aryabhata. 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. It carried instruments for experiments in astronomy and solar physics, and although its power system failed after a few days, it proved that India could build a satellite.

Option A, Rohini, was the first satellite placed in orbit by an Indian launch vehicle, the SLV-3, in July 1980, which is the next milestone and the usual trap. Option B, Bhaskara, was an early earth observation satellite launched in 1979. Option D, INSAT-1A, was the first of the Indian National Satellite System for communication, launched in 1982. The order Aryabhata, Bhaskara, Rohini, INSAT is worth remembering.

The correct answer is C, Chandipur, Odisha. Prithvi II is test-fired from the Integrated Test Range at Chandipur on the Odisha coast, the DRDO range used for missile and rocket trials. Prithvi II is a surface-to-surface short-range ballistic missile of the Indian Air Force, developed under the Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme that Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam led. It runs on liquid propellant, has a range of about 350 km and can carry a warhead of 500 to 1,000 kg. Option A is wrong because Rutland Island in the Andamans has no missile test range. Option B is wrong because Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh is ISRO's launch centre for satellites, not a missile range. Option D is wrong because Machilipatnam is a coastal town with no such facility. Exam tip: the IGMDP missiles are Prithvi, Agni, Trishul, Akash and Nag; missiles are tested at Chandipur, while satellites go up from Sriharikota.

The correct answer is B, PSLV-C57. Aditya-L1 was launched on 2 September 2023 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota by the PSLV-C57 flight, which used the most powerful version of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. The spacecraft was first placed in an orbit around the Earth, raised that orbit in steps, and then left for the Lagrange point L1, where it was inserted into a halo orbit in January 2024.

Option A, the GSLV Mk II, is used mainly for communication satellites going to geostationary transfer orbit. Option C, LVM3-M4, is the vehicle that launched Chandrayaan-3 in July 2023, and candidates often mix the two missions of the same year. Option D, the SSLV, is the small satellite launch vehicle meant for light payloads into low orbits. Tie the pair firmly in memory: LVM3 for Chandrayaan-3, PSLV for Aditya-L1.

The correct answer is B, the PSLV. Chandrayaan-1 went up on PSLV-C11 in October 2008 and the Mars Orbiter Mission on PSLV-C25 in November 2013, both in the extended PSLV-XL configuration with six long strap-on motors. Both spacecraft were light enough for the PSLV to place them in a high ellipse from which their own engines raised them towards the moon and Mars.

Option A, GSLV Mk III, now called LVM3, was not yet operational in 2008 and was used later for Chandrayaan-2 and Chandrayaan-3. Option C, SLV-3, could lift only about 40 kg and was retired in the early 1980s. Option D, GSLV Mk II, is meant for communication satellites bound for geostationary orbit and was not used for either interplanetary mission. This pairing of vehicle with mission is the single most asked point in the chapter.

The correct answer is C, 2014. 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. With it India became the first country to reach Mars at its very first attempt and the first Asian country to reach the planet at all, and the mission drew attention for its very low cost. It carried instruments to study the surface, the atmosphere and methane, and it orbited the planet without landing on it.

Option A, 2008, is the year of Chandrayaan-1. Option B, 2013, is the year of launch and not of orbit insertion, which is the distinction the question tests. Option D, 2019, is the year of Chandrayaan-2. Keeping launch dates and arrival dates separate is the safest way to answer questions from this chapter.

The correct answer is B, Moon Mineralogy Mapper. This imaging spectrometer, supplied by the United States space agency and flown on the Indian orbiter, measured how sunlight reflected from the lunar surface and found the absorption signature of water molecules and hydroxyl, especially towards the poles. The finding was announced in 2009 and remains the best known scientific result of the Indian space programme.

Option A, the Moon Impact Probe, was also carried by Chandrayaan 1 and struck the surface on 14 November 2008, but its role was to test descent technology and plant the flag, and its own instruments gave only supporting evidence. Option C, the Orbiter High Resolution Camera, belongs to Chandrayaan 2 and came eleven years later. Option D, the Lyman Alpha Photometer, was a payload of the Mars Orbiter Mission, not of a lunar mission.

The correct answer is B, L1, about 15 lakh kilometres. The Lagrange point L1 of the Sun and the Earth lies between the two bodies, roughly 1.5 million or fifteen lakh kilometres from the Earth. At that point the gravitational pulls of the Sun and the Earth combine with the motion of the spacecraft so that it keeps station with the Earth. A spacecraft there can watch the Sun without any interruption from an eclipse or from the night side of the Earth, which is why Aditya-L1 was sent there.

Option A names L2, which lies on the far side of the Earth from the Sun at a similar distance and holds the James Webb Space Telescope. Option C gives the distance of the Moon from the Earth, about 3.84 lakh kilometres, which is far too close. Option D gives roughly the distance of the Earth from the Sun and a different Lagrange point altogether. Remember that L1 is about one hundredth of the way to the Sun.

The correct answer is B, Soyuz T-11. Rakesh Sharma flew on Soyuz T-11, launched from Baikonur on 2 April 1984, and docked with the Soviet space station Salyut 7. The flight was part of the Interkosmos programme, under which the Soviet Union carried cosmonauts of friendly countries, and Sharma carried out experiments in biomedicine and remote sensing.

Option A, Vostok 1, carried Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space, in April 1961. Option C, Apollo 11, was the American mission that landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon in July 1969. Option D, Shenzhou-5, carried Yang Liwei in October 2003 and made China the third country to launch a human being into orbit on its own. Keeping these four spacecraft and their firsts apart is the point of the question.

The correct answer is C, 2023. 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. India thus became the fourth country to make a soft landing on the Moon, after the Soviet Union, the United States and China, and the first to land in the south polar region, which interests scientists because water ice may survive in its shadowed craters. The day is now observed as National Space Day.

Option A, 2019, is the year of Chandrayaan-2, whose orbiter still works but whose lander was lost. Option B, 2021, saw no Indian lunar landing. Option D, 2024, is after the event. The pair to remember is Chandrayaan-2 in 2019 without a landing and Chandrayaan-3 in 2023 with one.

The correct answer is B, VELC. The Visible Emission Line Coronagraph is the largest and the principal instrument aboard Aditya-L1. A coronagraph creates an artificial eclipse inside the instrument by covering the bright disc of the Sun, so that the faint outer atmosphere called the corona becomes visible. VELC can observe the corona close to the solar surface and study how coronal mass ejections begin, which is the key to understanding space weather.

Option A, SUIT, is the Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope, which photographs the Sun in ultraviolet light and studies the layers below the corona. Option C, HEL1OS, is the high energy X-ray spectrometer that records the hard X-rays of solar flares. Option D, ASPEX, is the particle experiment that samples the solar wind arriving at the spacecraft. All four are genuine payloads of the mission, so the question turns on which one is the chief instrument.

The correct answer is A, Paris. 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. The agency has separate establishments spread across Europe for technology, astronaut training and mission control, and it works with NASA on projects such as the Hubble and James Webb telescopes and the International Space Station.

Option B, Brussels, is the seat of the European Union and of NATO, not of the space agency, which is a separate body with its own members. Option C, Kourou in French Guiana, is where the agency's Guiana Space Centre launches rockets, chosen for its nearness to the equator. Option D, Darmstadt in Germany, holds the European Space Operations Centre, which controls missions after launch. Only the headquarters is in Paris.

The correct answer is B, 23 August 2023. The Vikram lander of Chandrayaan-3 touched down near the south polar region of the Moon on 23 August 2023, making India the fourth country to achieve a soft landing on the Moon and the first to do so near the lunar south pole. The Pragyan rover then rolled out and worked through one lunar day. The landing site was named Shiv Shakti Point and 23 August is now observed in India as National Space Day.

Option A, 14 July 2023, is the launch date of Chandrayaan-3 aboard the LVM3-M4 vehicle. Option C, 2 September 2023, is the launch date of Aditya-L1, the solar mission that followed soon after. Option D, 6 January 2024, is the date on which Aditya-L1 was inserted into its halo orbit around the Lagrange point L1. All three are real dates from the same period, which is what makes the question tricky.