• Hyderabad-based space startup Skyroot Aerospace successfully tested a solid fuel-based engine, Kalam-100 Engine that would be used in the third stage of the launch vehicle called Vikram 1.

Key points:

• The company is developing a series of three small satellite launch vehicles called Vikram 1, Vikram 2, and Vikram 3.
• The Vikram 1 rocket will use four fuel-based stages which includes 3 solid fuel and one 1 liquid fuel stages for the launch.
• Launch vehicle contains four stages, in which the third stage contains a solid fuel-based engine called Kalam-100 Engine, named after Dr APJ Abdul Kalam.
• Kalam-100 engine is the largest rocket stage ever designed, manufactured, and tested completely in the Indian private sector.
• In 2021, Skyroot successfully demonstrated the country’s first privately developed cryogenic engine, Dhawan-1, which will be the upper stage in the Vikram-2 rocket.

• The Greenko Group and the Government of Andhra Pradesh is setting up the World’s largest Integrated Renewable Energy Storage Project (IRESP) with a capacity to store 5,230 Mega Watt (MW), in the Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh.

Key Points:

• The Greenko Group is one of India’s leading Renewable Energy companies, providing solutions for energy transition and decarbonisation.
• It will be the first-of-its-kind Single location energy storage project with wind and solar capacities.
• The project is scheduled to be commissioned by the last quarter of 2023.
• The project will help avoid 15 million tonnes of CO2 annually which is equivalent to emissions from three million cars.

• Delhi Government has undertaken a unique initiative of using robots for extinguishing fires in Delhi. By inducting the two robots into Delhi’s firefighting fleets, the fire fighters would be able to extinguish fires easily in narrow streets, warehouses, basements, stairs, forests and enter places like oil and chemical tankers and factories.

• The foreign direct investment (FDI)in the financial year 2021-22 has touched a “highest-ever” figure of $83.57 billion. India’s foreign investment inflows increased 20-fold since the financial year 2003-04 when it recorded a mere $4.3 billion.
• Among the top contributors to India’s FDI inflow, Singapore topped the charts with a share of 27% followed by the US (18%) and Mauritius accounting for 16%.
• The computer software and hardware remained the top sector which received the FDI inflow with around 25% share followed by services sector and automobile sector getting 12% each.
• Karnataka is the top recipient state with 38% share of the total FDI Equity inflow reported during the previous financial year followed by Maharashtra (26%) and Delhi (14%).

• World Metrology Day (WMD) is annually observed across the globe on 20th May to create awareness about the
• Metrology, the science of measurement and its application. The day highlights the use of Metrology in scientific fields, innovation, industries, trading and other fields. The theme for World Metrology Day 2022 is “Metrology in the Digital Era”.

• WARDEC is a prototype name given to the ‘Wargame Research and Development Centre’ to be developed in New Delhi.
• It will be a first-of-its-kind simulation-based training centre in India that will use artificial intelligence (AI) to design virtual reality wargames.
• It will be developed by the Army Training Command and Gandhinagar-based Rashtriya Raksha University (RRU).
• It will be used by the Army to train its soldiers and test their strategies through “metaverse-enabled gameplay”.

• NASA’s  Voyager is continuing its journey beyond our Solar System, 45 years after it was launched. But now the veteran spacecraft is sending back strange data, puzzling its engineers. A glitch is said to be behind this.
• The glitch has to do with Voyager 1’s attitude articulation and control system, or AACS, which keeps the spacecraft and its antenna in the proper orientation.
• Preliminary analysis suggests that the craft is confused about its location in space.

About Voyager mission:

• Launched in the 1970’s, and the probes sent by NASA were only meant to explore the outer planets – but they just kept on going.
• Voyager 1 departed Earth on 5 September 1977 and Voyager 2 left our solar system in 2013.
• Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have visited all four gas giant planets — Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune — and discovered 16 moons, as well as phenomena like Neptune’s mysteriously transient Great Dark Spot, the cracks in Europa’s ice shell, and ring features at every planet.

• Hyperloop is the 5th mode of transportation, a high-speed train that travels in a near vacuum tube. The reduced air resistance allows the capsule inside the tube to reach speeds of more than 1,000 km/h.

Key Points:

1. The collaboration also involves setting up a Centre for Excellence for Hyperloop Technology at IIT-M.
2. At the IIT-M, a team of students, Team Avishkar Hyperloop is working on the emerging domain of Hyperloop-based transportation solutions for a futuristic commuting experience.
3. Team Avishkar aims to build the world’s largest student-developed Hyperloop testing facility at IIT Madras.
4. The model proposed by Team Avishkar can achieve a top speed of over 1,200 kilometres per hour.

• In order to study the changing weather phenomena in the Mount (Mt) Everest, following Expeditions have made –
• The National Geographic Society has installed the World’s highest weather station on Mt Everest.
• China flew an airship at record height over Mt Everest to gather Atmospheric Composition data and Water vapour transporting Phenomenon.

Nat Geo Installed the World’s Highest Weather Station on Mt. Everest

• The National Geographic Society has installed the ‘World’s highest weather station’ on Mount Everest at an altitude of 8,830 metres to automatically measure various meteorological phenomena.
• Under the MoU with Nepal Government, the National Geographic team will fully operate the stations till 2025 following which the technology will be transferred to the Nepal Government in 2026.

• Chinese scientists have proposed a space project to survey the sky through a space-borne telescope to hunt for habitable Earth-like planets outside the solar system, about 32 light-years from Earth.
• The project, named Closeby Habitable Exoplanet Survey (CHES) would be the first space mission specially designed to search for habitable terrestrial planets around nearby Sun-like stars.