SSC GK Questions 2026

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.

Pokhran lies in Jaisalmer district in the Thar desert and was the site of the underground nuclear test of 1974, code named Smiling Buddha, and of the series of tests in May 1998 carried out as Operation Shakti, after which India declared itself a nuclear weapon state.

Sawai Jai Singh II of the Kachhwaha house moved his seat from the hill fort of Amber to the plain and founded Jaipur in 1727.

The Makrana quarries in Nagaur district have produced white marble for centuries, and it is the marble used in the Taj Mahal at Agra and in the Victoria Memorial at Kolkata.

Kalbelia is the dance and song tradition of the Kalbelia community of snake charmers of Rajasthan. The women dance in black swirling skirts with movements that recall a serpent, to the be en and the khanjari played by the men, and the songs are composed on the spot.

The Battle of Haldighati was fought in June 1576 in the hills near Gogunda in Mewar between Maharana Pratap of Mewar and the Mughal army sent by Akbar under Man Singh of Amber.

Kalibangan, in Hanumangarh district, stands on the dry bed of the Ghaggar, the river many identify with the Saraswati of the texts.

Acting on the report of the Balwant Rai Mehta Committee, Rajasthan became the first state to introduce Panchayati Raj, and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru inaugurated it at Nagaur on 2 October 1959, Gandhi Jayanti.

Sambhar Lake lies west of Jaipur, spread over parts of Jaipur, Nagaur and Ajmer districts. It is the largest inland saline lake in the country, a major source of common salt, a Ramsar site, and a winter feeding ground for flamingos and other migratory birds.

The Luni rises in the Aravallis near Ajmer, flows south west across the desert districts of Marwar, grows saline as it picks up salts from the soil, and ends in the marshes of the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat without reaching open sea.