Security

Missile/ Satellite Features

Astra: BVR, air to air (40 kilometers, launched from aircrafts)
Akash, Trishul: Surface to Air
Nag: Anti tank
Prithvi: Surface to Surface, short range, 2-stage (solid/liquid) fueled
Agni: ICBM, long range, 3-stage solid fueled; primarily for nuclear
weapons delivery (Agni-5 is canister based)
Dhanush: Ship-launched, surface to surface
Surface-to-air, medium range missile, range of 30 km, India’s first
Akash
indigenously designed, developed, and produced such missile
Astra is a beyond visual range (BVR) air-to-air missile developed
by DRDO (20-80 km range)
Astra
Astra was recently successfully launched from Sukhoi-30 fighter
aircraft to hit a simulated target. It is indigenously developed
Its a 2-stage, solid propelled, surface-to-surface missile, with a
Agni-III
strike range of 3,000+ km
Indigenously developed canister-based inter-continental ballistic
missile (ICBM)

This is a three-stage solid propellant missile with strike range of

Agni V
over 5,000 kilometer and capable of carrying nuclear warhead of
over one tonne

Can cover most parts of China and Europe

 The missile is indigenously developed nuclear capable surface-
to-surface missile with a strike range of 350 km
 The missile is thrusted by liquid propulsion twine engines
 It uses advanced inertial guidance system with manoeuvering
Prithvi II
trajectory
 It is the first missile to be developed by DRDO under India’s
prestigious IGMDP (Integrated Guided Missile Development
Program)
Variant of Prithvi II; Surface to surface, single-stage, liquid propelled,
Dhanush missile
350km range; developed for the Indian navy
World’s fastest cruise missile; capable of being launched from land,
sea, sub-sea, and air; is a land-attack cruise missile

(A cruise missile is a guided missile used against terrestrial targets,

BrahMos
so called because the major portion of its flight path is conducted
at cruise speed (i.e., approximately constant velocity). Cruise missiles
are designed to deliver a large warhead over long distances with high
accuracy) 

Garuda Shakti III Joint exercises between armies of India and Indonesia
SIMBEX Bilateral naval exercise with Singapore
Co-development of short-range surface-to-air missile by DRDO, in
Operation Maitri
collaboration with France
ISRO`s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle, PSLV-C27, recently successfully
IRNSS launched the 1425 kg IRNSS-1D, the fourth satellite in the Indian
Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS)

Beagle 2  Beagle 2 is a British landing spacecraft that formed part of

the European Space Agency's 2003 Mars Express mission
 The spacecraft was successfully deployed from the Mars
Express on 19 December 2003 and was scheduled to land on the
 surface of Mars on 25 December; however, no contact was
received at the expected time of landing on Mars, with the ESA
declaring the mission lost in February 2004
 The spacecraft's fate remained a mystery until it was announced
in January 2015 that Beagle 2 had been located intact on the
surface of Mars in a series of images from NASA's Mars
Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE instrument
India’s second lunar mission, is almost completely indigenously
Chandrayaan 2
made by HAL
Messenger Crashed into Mercury after 11 years of its launch (NASA)
Curiosity Mars rover (NASA)
A probe by NASA that recently became the first space probe to reach
New Horizons
Pluto
Dawn Reached CERES, an asteroid in the Mars-Jupiter belt

 Rosetta is a robotic space probe built and launched by

the European Space Agency
 Along with Philae, its lander module, Rosetta is performing a
detailed study of comet 67P/ Churyumov–Gerasimenko
Rosetta spacecraft
 It also performed a flyby of the planet Mars, and in
(lander module:
November 2014, the mission performed the first soft
Philae)
landing on a comet and returned data from the surface
 It recently discovered that 67P doesn’t have a magnetic field,
which brings into questions our current theories about the
formation of planets, which is supposed to be aided by
magnetic fields

The first dedicated Indian astronomy mission (satellite) aimed at

ASTROSAT
studying distant celestial objects is now fully assembled
 The GPS-Aided Geo Augmented Navigation (GAGAN) system will
offer seamless navigation to the aviation industry
 Develped by ISRO and the Airports Authority of India (AAI)
 Will provide augmentation service for the GPS over the country,
the Bay of Bengal, South East Asia and Middle East and up to Africa
 Improved efficiency, direct routes, increased fuel savings, approach
with vertical guidance at runways, significant cost savings because
of the withdrawal of ground aids and reduced workload of flight
crew and air traffic controllers
ISRO Gagan  Gagan works by augmenting and relaying data from GPS satellites
System with the help of two augmentation satellites and 15 earth-based
reference stations
 The system would be available for the member states of the South
Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC)
 Drawback: The aircrafts being used by Indian operators are not
compatible with GAGAN. Only those aircraft that are fitted with
SBAS will be able to use the new technology. Cost of refurbishing
aircraft with new equipment and downtime for electronic
restructuring are expenses that the financially-stressed Indian
airline industry does not seem comfortable having to bear
Antrix ISRO’s commercial arm
Gravity Field and
First of European Space Agency’s Living Planet Programme
Steady-State
satellites intended to map in unprecedented detail the Earth’s gravity
Ocean Circulation
field
Explorer (GOCE)
Breakthrough A Stepehen Hawking Project to search for aliens
Listen
1. Names of Central Armed Police Forces: Currently India has three
Paramilitary organisations. The three paramilitary forces mainly aid the
armed forces in guarding the land as well as maritime borders to prevent
any unwanted intrusion. These are -
 Assam Rifles - Assam Rifles has the distinction of the oldest
paramilitary force in the world. Assam Rifles operates in the North
Eastern part of India and complements the Indian Army in countering
the insurgency and guarding the borders. It comes under the Ministry
of Home Affairs
 Special Frontier Force - Raised after the 1962 war, the SFF consists
of soldiers of Tibetan lineage. It is tasked with guarding the borders
with China as well as certain intelligence gathering activities. It
reports to the Intelligence Bureau
 Coast Guard - The Coast Guard is a naval paramilitary force. It deals
with the security of India's coast and focuses on preventing smuggling
and protecting the territorial waters (reporting to Ministry of
Defence)

 Earlier forces like Border Security Force (BSF), Central Industrial

Security Force (CISF) etc. were also known as paramilitary forces.
However, these are now known as Central Armed Police Force
(CAPF)

2. Status of India’s top-security agencies vis-à-vis RTI: Twenty-five of

India’s top security agencies are exempt from most of the requirements of
the RTI Act, but are required to provide access to information if it relates to
allegations of corruption and human rights violations

3. ‘Order of Rising Sun, Gold, and Silver Star’ is Japan’s highest civilian award;
this was recently awarded to Indian chemist CNR Rao

4. Gorkha Rifles completed 200 years of existence

5. CERN- operates the world’s largest particle physics laboratory

6. Pluto's moon
7. Sanjeev Galande- awarded the GB Birla Memorial Prize for his research on
epigenetics (study of cellular and physiological trait variations that are not
caused by changes in the DNA sequence. It is essentially the study of
external or environmental factors that turn genes on and off and affect how
cells read genes)

Other Document

IT
 NFC (Near Field Communication):
 NFC is a set of ideas and technology that enables smartphones and other
devices to establish radio communication with each other by touching them
together or bringing them into proximity, typically a distance of 10 cm
(3.9 in) or less
 Can be used for payments, social networking, file transfers etc.

 Differences between AM, FM, MW, and Digital Radio; distance

characteristics; which one is better?

 https://www.facebook.com/notes/univercell/what-is-the-difference-
between-2g-3g-4g-mobile-networks/409844075722899

 Upset price: the lowest acceptable selling price for a property in an auction; a
reserve price

 http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/editorial-spectrum-auction-
realities/article6764554.ece

 White Space Technology: http://www.business-

standard.com/article/economy-policy/govt-to-test-white-space-with-
microsoft-iit-115060901049_1.html

Space

 ‘Dawn’ spacecraft reaches CERES:

 March 2015: NASA”s ‘Dawn’ spacecraft is the first mission to successfully
visit a dwarf planet ‘Ceres’, located in the asteroid belt between Mars and
Jupiter
 Ceres is the most massive body in the asteroid belt, with an average
diameter of about 1000 km
 Ceres is thought to be about 25% water by mass. If this is true, this would
be a major discovery

 ‘Rosetta’ spacecraft:
 Rosetta is a robotic space probe built and launched by the European Space
Agency
 Along with Philae, its lander module, Rosetta is performing a detailed study
of comet 67P/ Churyumov–Gerasimenko
 It also performed a flyby of the planet Mars, and in November 2014, the
mission performed the first soft landing on a comet and returned data from
the surface
 It recently discovered that 67P doesn’t have a magnetic field, which brings
into questions our current theories about the formation of planets, which is
supposed to be aided by magnetic fields

 Beagle 2:
  Beagle 2 is a British landing spacecraft that formed part of the European
Space Agency's 2003 Mars Express mission
 The spacecraft was successfully deployed from the Mars Express on 19
December 2003 and was scheduled to land on the surface of Mars on 25
December; however, no contact was received at the expected time of
landing on Mars, with the ESA declaring the mission lost in February 2004
 The spacecraft's fate remained a mystery until it was announced in January
2015 that Beagle 2 had been located intact on the surface of Mars in a series
of images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE instrument

 NASA’s Messenger spacecraft:

 Crashed into the planet Mercury in January 2015, ending its four-year
mission to explore the planet by creating a new crater on its surface
 Messenger is the first spacecraft to have orbited the planet closest to the
sun
 Among its discoveries was the fact that Mercury’s polar regions contain
large quantities of frozen water, under a mysterious “dark layer” of
material that may be organic compounds

 India’s ASTROSAT:
 This will be India’s first space observatory, and is planned to be launched in
October
 Astrosat would be the first such satellite to scan simultaneously the sky in
most of the frequency spectra from ultraviolet to optical and low- and high-
energy X-ray bands

Computers

 IFSC (Indian Financial System Code): An alphanumeric code that uniquely

identifies a bank-branch participating in the two main Electronic Funds
Settlement Systems in India: the Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) and the
National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) Systems

Robotics

Nano-technology

 Cesium atoms are used to keep time

 ‘Leap Smear’ is the practice of spreading the extra ‘leap’ second over all
the other 86,400 seconds in a day

Bio-technology

 Britain’s ‘three-parent’ babies:

 Also known as ‘mitochondrial transfer’, three-parent in-vitro fertilization
 Mitochondria are tiny energy-generating parts in cells
 New-born babies, from genetically modified embryos, would have DNA
from a mother, a father, and from a female donor
 Involves intervening in the fertilisation process to remove faulty
mitochondrial DNA, which can cause inherited conditions such as heart
problems, liver failure, brain disorders, blindness and muscular dystrophy

1. ‘White Spaces’ technology:

 The TV White Spaces technology would utilise the unused space in the
terrestrial TV spectrum to provide cheap Internet connectivity to remote
areas. The technology would dynamically allocate unused bands for
broadband transmission without affecting the TV transmissions
 It would provide wide coverage and cheap licence-free access. While the
Wi-Fi network covers a range of up to 100 metres, coverage under the
200-300 Mhz spectrum available in white space could reach up to 10 km
 The technology could be the affordable answer to the last mile
connectivity challenges and it could be utilised in times of emergencies
like natural disasters
2. ILTOS: International Treaty for the Law of the Sea is an independent
judicial body set up by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. It has the
power to settle disputes between party states.
3. The Union Minister of State for Home Affairs recently said that India will
implement the Sendai frameworkfor Disaster Risk Reduction in letter
and spirit.The Sendai Framework is a 15-year, voluntary, non-binding
agreement which recognizes that the State has the primary role to
reduce disaster risk but that responsibility should be shared with other
stakeholders including local government, the private sector and other
stakeholders
4. Communication satellite GSAT-6 has been successfully positioned in its
orbital slot
 Is aimed primarily at benefiting the country’s strategic users and other
authorised users
 GSAT-6 will provide S-band communication services in the country.
 S band:The S band is part of the microwave band of the electromagnetic
spectrumused by weather radar, surface ship radar, and some
communications satellites
5. Cyber crime: According to Section 65 B (2) of the Evidence Act, any
electronic evidence to be permissible in court has to be certified by the
signature of the person concerned, to whom the computer belonged.
Essentially, a certified document has to be attached to any kind of
evidence generated from a computer, without application of logic that the
contents in the computer could itself have been tampered with
6. The Indian Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) has completed one year in
space. Initially, it was intended to last six months, but it has outperformed
7. The Union Ministry of Mines is planning to use remote sensing satellite
data to curb illegal mining across States

8. Torpedoes are self propelled weapons with a warhead and can be used
under or on the water surface. They are one of the mainstay of sea-
warfare attack systems. The Advanced Torpedo Defence System (ATDS),
(nicknamed ‘Mareech’) christened as Mareech was recently handed over
by defence minister Manohar Parrikar to the Navy.

9. India’s first solar mission, Aditya-1, is slated for lift-off in 2018-2019. It

will study the sun’s outer most layers, the corona and the chromospheres
and collect data about coronal mass ejection, which will also yield
information for space weather prediction.
10. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has launched its first
dedicated space observatory ASTROSAT into space, besides six satellites
for Canada, Indonesia and the United States. This mission has put ISRO in
a very exclusive club of nations that have space-based observatories. Only
the United States, European Space Agency, Japan and Russia have such
observatories in space

11. The Ministry of Defence has approved the induction of women into the
Fighter (Combat) stream of the IAF. With this decision to open up
induction of women in the fighter stream, women have become eligible
for induction in all branches and streams of the IAF.

12. Following the Air Force, even the Navy has decided to throw open its
doors to women fighter pilots. All flying areas in the Navy will be opened
for women, except where it requires staying overnight on carriers and
ships.

13. In September 2025, in a landmark judgement, the Delhi High Court had
granted Permanent Commission for women and had pulled up the
Defence Ministry and the Navy for sexist bias and blocking women’s
progress. A permanent commission means a career in the Army/Navy till
one retires. A permanent commission also entitles 20 years of service and
a pension.
1. Malabar Coast military exercises saw participation between India, USA,
and Japan- China was not happy
2. India' Sri Lanka joint military exercise 'Mitra Shakti 2015