Static general knowledge is six of the seven lines of the General Studies Paper-I syllabus in the UPSC CSE notice: History of India and the Indian National Movement; Indian and World Geography; Indian Polity and Governance; Economic and Social Development; Environmental Ecology, Bio-diversity and Climate Change; and General Science. The Commission tests understanding rather than recall, through statements to be judged correct or incorrect, pairs to be matched and assertion-reason items, and it likes the edges of a topic: a lesser-known provision of the Constitution, a river's tributary, a species' conservation status, the mandate of a statutory body. This page holds GK24's topic-wise GK notes for UPSC, written as short facts and tables, in English and Hindi, with each note linked to the current affairs and previous-year questions on the same topic. Start with Polity and Modern History, which carry the most questions, then Geography, the Economy, Environment, Ancient and Medieval culture and Science. Read a note, solve its PYQs, take its quiz, and come back to it in your monthly revision. A candidate who knows these notes and reads the daily current affairs has covered the syllabus the notice prescribes for Paper-I.
Bharati, the third Indian research station in Antarctica, was commissioned in which year?
Bharati was commissioned in 2012 at the Larsemann Hills on the coast of east Antarctica, roughly three thousand kilometres from Maitri.
Read the full explanation →India's Maitri research station in Antarctica is located at:
Maitri was commissioned in 1989 on the rocky Schirmacher Oasis, a narrow ice-free strip, next to the freshwater lake named Priyadarshini.
Read the full explanation →Which was the first Indian research station established in Antarctica?
It was built during the Indian expedition of 1983 to 1984 in Queen Maud Land and was India's first permanent base on the continent.
Read the full explanation →As per the mitigation practice recommended by the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, a satellite in low Earth orbit should be cleared from the protected region within how many years of the end of its mission?
The long-standing guideline of the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee, formed in 1993 and including ISRO among its member agencies, is that a spacecraft or upper stage leaving the low Earth orbit protected region should be de-orbited, or placed in an orbit from which it will re-enter, within twenty-five years…
Read the full explanation →Which international agreement makes the launching state liable for damage caused by its space object?
Its full name is the Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects, and it fixes responsibility on the state that launches or procures the launch of a space object.
Read the full explanation →A graveyard orbit, also called a disposal orbit, is located:
A communication satellite nearing the end of its life keeps a small reserve of fuel to raise itself out of the crowded geostationary ring into a higher orbit where it cannot drift back into a working slot or collide with an active satellite.
Read the full explanation →The first major accidental collision between two intact satellites in orbit took place in 2009 between which pair?
In February 2009 the working American communication satellite Iridium 33 and the defunct Russian military communication satellite Kosmos 2251 struck each other over Siberia at a relative speed of several kilometres per second.
Read the full explanation →Project NETRA of the Indian Space Research Organisation is associated with which activity?
NETRA stands for Network for Space Objects Tracking and Analysis. It is ISRO's programme to build radar, optical telescope and control centre capability for space situational awareness, so that India can detect, track and catalogue objects in orbit and warn its own satellites about possible close approaches instead of depending…
Read the full explanation →Under India's Mission Shakti of 27 March 2019, which satellite was destroyed in the anti-satellite test?
In Mission Shakti an interceptor developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation was launched from Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam Island off the Odisha coast and destroyed India's own Microsat-R satellite in low Earth orbit at a height of about 283 kilometres.
Read the full explanation →Who described the cascading collision scenario in low Earth orbit that is now known as the Kessler Syndrome, and in which year?
Kessler, then working with the American space agency, published the argument that once the population of objects in low Earth orbit crosses a certain density, collisions between them will generate fragments faster than the atmosphere can drag the old debris down.
Read the full explanation →Satellites of the Global Positioning System are placed in which orbit?
Global Positioning System satellites orbit at about 20,200 kilometres, which lies in the medium Earth orbit band stretching from 2,000 kilometres up to the geostationary height of 35,786 kilometres.
Read the full explanation →The concept of a geostationary communication satellite orbit was popularised in 1945 by which writer, after whom the orbit is named?
The British science fiction writer and engineer set out in 1945 how three satellites placed in a circular equatorial orbit at about 36,000 kilometres could relay radio signals to almost the whole inhabited world.
Read the full explanation →Which type of orbit is normally used by Earth observation and remote sensing satellites so that images are taken under similar lighting every day?
Such an orbit is near-polar, typically 600 to 900 kilometres high with an inclination of about 98 degrees, which makes it retrograde.
Read the full explanation →The orbital period of a geostationary satellite is equal to:
A geostationary satellite must match the rotation of the Earth with respect to the distant stars, and that rotation takes one sidereal day.
Read the full explanation →At what height above the Earth's equator does a geostationary satellite orbit?
Only at this height does a satellite in a circular equatorial orbit take exactly one sidereal day to complete a revolution, which is the condition for appearing stationary above one point on the Earth.
Read the full explanation →As per the Census of 2011, which of the following statements about the Andaman and Nicobar Islands is correct?
With a population of 3,80,581 spread over 8,249 square kilometres, the territory recorded a density of only 46 persons per square kilometre at the 2011 Census, by far the lowest among the union territories, because most of its land is forest and most of its islands are uninhabited.
Read the full explanation →The Mahatma Gandhi Marine National Park in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands is located at:
The Mahatma Gandhi Marine National Park, set up near Wandoor on the south-western coast of South Andaman, protects a stretch of coral reefs, mangroves and small islands along with the turtles, molluscs and reef fish that live there.
Read the full explanation →The Andaman and Nicobar Islands fall under the jurisdiction of which High Court?
The union territory has no High Court of its own and comes under the jurisdiction of the Calcutta High Court, which holds a circuit bench in the territorial capital so that litigants do not have to travel to the mainland for every hearing.
Read the full explanation →Ross Island in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands was renamed in 2018 as:
Ross Island, which had been the administrative headquarters of the British in these islands before an earthquake damaged it, was renamed after Netaji in 2018 to honour his visit and his claim of the islands as free Indian soil.
Read the full explanation →Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose hoisted the Indian tricolour at Port Blair on which date?
During the Japanese occupation of the islands in the Second World War, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose visited Port Blair and hoisted the tricolour there, claiming the islands as the first Indian territory freed from British rule.
Read the full explanation →