Medium Level – GK Questions

Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after liftoff on January 28, 1986, killing all seven crew members. The cause was O-ring failure in cold weather.

Observations of distant supernovae in the late 1990s revealed that cosmic expansion is accelerating, attributed to dark energy. This discovery won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Chandrayaan-1 was launched aboard PSLV-C11 on October 22, 2008, from Sriharikota. PSLV-XL variant was used for heavier payload capacity.

HSFC was established in Bengaluru in 2019 to coordinate all aspects of India's human spaceflight programme, including astronaut training and mission management.

Unlike Saturn's bright rings, Jupiter's faint ring system was unknown until Voyager 1 imaged them in 1979. They consist mainly of dust particles.

The Pleiades, or Messier 45, is an open star cluster in Taurus, traditionally called the Seven Sisters in Greek mythology and many cultures worldwide.

Pragyan's LIBS instrument unambiguously detected Sulphur (S) in the lunar regolith near the south pole, along with Aluminum, Calcium, Iron, Chromium, Titanium, Manganese, Silicon, and Oxygen.

Chandra is a flagship NASA space telescope launched in 1999, dedicated to X-ray astronomy, observing high-energy phenomena like black holes and supernova remnants.

Olympus Mons on Mars stands about 22 km high, nearly three times the height of Mount Everest, making it the largest known volcano in the solar system.

President John F. Kennedy declared this goal in a speech to Congress on May 25, 1961, initiating the Apollo program that culminated in the 1969 Moon landing.

ISRO renamed its earth observation satellites from IRS (Indian Remote Sensing) to EOS (Earth Observation Satellite) starting with EOS-01 in 2020 to better reflect mission purpose.

After exhausting nuclear fuel, stars like the Sun shed their outer layers as planetary nebulae, leaving behind a dense core called a white dwarf.

The Crew Escape System (CES) is designed to rapidly separate the crew module from the launch vehicle in case of emergencies during ascent, ensuring astronaut safety.

Jupiter trojans are asteroids that share Jupiter's orbit around the Sun, clustered near the stable Lagrange points L4 and L5, 60° ahead and behind the planet.

The RLV-TD LEX (Landing Experiment) successfully demonstrated autonomous landing on a runway at Aeronautical Test Range, Chitradurga, in April 2023.

By recovering and reusing major components (like boosters), launch costs can be significantly reduced compared to expendable rockets. SpaceX's Falcon 9 is a prominent example.

Current cosmological models estimate dark matter makes up ~27% of the universe, dark energy ~68%, and ordinary (baryonic) matter ~5%.

Artemis is NASA's lunar exploration program, with international partners, aiming to land the first woman and next man on the Moon's south pole region.

NavIC transmits navigation signals in the L5 band (1176.45 MHz) and S-band (2492.028 MHz). Future satellites may include L1 band compatibility for wider civilian use.

The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy, characterized by a central bar-shaped structure composed of stars, from which spiral arms extend.