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Lunar CodeX (GS-3)

News: The Lunar Codex program could make a collection of various human artistic creations everlasting.

As a permanent record of human ingenuity, even during times of war, pandemics, and economic crises, the Lunar Codex collection of artwork acquired from artists will be left stranded on the lunar surface.

Canadian scientist and art collector Samuel Peralta, who is semi-retired, is the leader of this program. As a permanent record of human creation, the variety of computerized artwork will be delivered to the moon.

Lunar Codex is kept on memory cards or laser etched on NanoFiche, a modern replacement for microfiche made of film. These will guarantee that the artistic creations safely reach the lunar surface.

The 30,000 artists, writers, filmmakers, and musicians that contributed to the collection came from 157 different nations. Images, periodicals, books, podcasts, films, and music are among the art genres, which are broken up into four categories.

When it was launched on the Orion spacecraft as part of NASA’s Artemis 1 mission last year, the first such capsule, known as the Orion collection, had already sailed around the moon.

The Lunar Codex capsules will be sent to several locations on the moon during the following months, including craters near the moon’s South Pole and a plain known as Sinus Viscositatis.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO):

• The space agency for India is called the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). The organization works in science, engineering, and technology to help India and humanity benefit from space.
• The Department of Space (DOS) of the Indian government includes ISRO as a key component. The department primarily uses different ISRO Centers or Units to carry out the Indian Space Program.
• The Indian National Committee for Space Research (INCOSPAR), which was founded by the Indian government in 1962 as Dr. VikramA Sarabhai’s idea, was the predecessor to ISRO. On August 15, 1969, ISRO was established, replacing INCOSPAR with an expanded mandate to utilize space technology. In 1972, DOS was established, and ISRO was included in DOS.
• The development and use of space technology for diverse national needs is ISRO/DOS’s main goal. Major space systems for communication, television broadcasting, and meteorological services, resource monitoring and management, and space-based navigation services have been built by ISRO to achieve this goal. To place the satellites in the necessary orbits, ISRO has created the PSLV and GSLV satellite launch vehicles.

JALDOST Airboat (GS-3)

News: The JALDOST airboat was unveiled by the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL).

An airboat that runs on water is called JALDOST. It is intended to get rid of extra aquatic weed and floating trash from bodies of water. It is built with an airtight, closed pontoon hull, making it naturally unsinkable.

It has a hybrid propulsion system, according to NAL, which combines paddle wheel and air propulsion. JALDOST is the perfect vessel to transport weed to the shore because it has the ability to pass through it.

The garbage is collected by a steel mesh belt conveyor system mounted at the front. The horizontal deck conveyor receives the gathered trash as it falls. Once at the shore, a back conveyor system loads the collected rubbish into tractors or trucks.

The airboat has been created by NAL in two iterations: JALDOST Mark-1 and JALDOST Mark-2. NAL, or National Aerospace Laboratories It is a part of the 1959-founded Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in India.

It is the sole government-run aerospace R&D facility in the whole civilian economy of the nation. CSIR-NAL is a high-tech organization that focuses on cutting-edge aeronautical specialties.

It has various cutting-edge testing facilities, many of which have been designated as National Facilities. It has contributed significantly with additional value to all of the national aerospace program in India.

National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL)

• The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) created the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL), India’s first and largest aerospace research organization, in Delhi in 1959.
• The organization shares a tight working relationship with HAL, DRDO, and ISRO and is primarily in charge of developing civil aircraft in India. It focuses on cutting-edge research in aerospace and related fields.
• The NAL, which has its headquarters in Bengaluru, employs roughly 2500 employees.
• The Nilakantan Wind tunnel Centre and a computerized fatigue test facility are both parts of NAL. NAL also provides resources for looking into failures and mishaps related to aircraft engineering.

Sovereign Credit Rating (GS-3)

News: Recently, the international credit rating agency Fitch lowered the US Sovereign rating from AAA to AA+.

• A credit rating is an evaluation of a borrower’s creditworthiness, which might be an individual, a business, or a nation.
• A sovereign credit rating is an unbiased evaluation of a nation or other sovereign entity’s creditworthiness.
• By issuing debt instruments like government bonds, governments borrow enormous amounts of money. Here, “creditworthiness” refers to the government’s capacity to recoup its debts without going into default.
• Investors can learn more about the political risks involved in investing in a certain country’s debt instruments (like bonds) through sovereign credit ratings.
• The three most important credit rating firms are Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s, and Fitch Ratings.
• Credit rating organizations use a variety of economic and financial indices to assess a nation’s creditworthiness, including that nation’s economic growth, fiscal practices, levels of public debt, degree of political stability, and position in the world of trade.

India’s Monetary Policy

• The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) monetary policy, which governs interest rates, the amount of money in circulation, and credit availability, is known as the central bank’s monetary policy.
• The RBI manages the nation’s inflation through its monetary policy. To accomplish its goals, RBI employs a variety of financial instruments, including REPO rates, Reverse REPO rates, SLRs, and CRRs. 
• In order to achieve the overarching goal of economic policy, monetary policy refers to the employment of monetary instruments under the supervision of the central bank to control variables like interest rates, money supply, and credit availability.

Iberian Wolf  (GS-3)

News: The Iberian wolf (Canis lupus signatus), which was once common in Andalusia, in the extreme south of Iberia, has reportedly been extinct since 2020.

• A subspecies of the grey wolf known as the iberian wolf has been kept separate from other wolf populations for more than a century.
• These make up the majority of the wolves in Western Europe. It is indigenous to the Iberian Peninsula, which includes Portugal and Spain.
• They live in mountains, shrublands, grasslands, pastures, inland marshes, and woods. They move in tiny packs to hunt, reside, and travel. The dominant male and female of each pack are present along with their young and older progeny.
• The pack’s leaders, known as alphas, are responsible for defining the territory of the pack, choosing the locations of the dens, and locating and pursuing prey.
• They eat meat, primarily, IUCN status of the environment: Vulnerable

International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

• The IUCN is a global alliance made up of both governmental and non-governmental groups. The IUCN is a global authority on the status of the natural world, with more than 1400 groups as members.
• It works in the area of sustainable development and also makes suggestions for ways to deal with resource depletion. It works to protect the varied flora and wildlife species.
• States, non-governmental organisations, organisations representing indigenous peoples, specialists, government organisations, etc. are among its members.
• The IUCN, which was founded in 1948, has the resources and information base to support global environmental protection and sustainable development.
• It was the first worldwide environmental association when it was founded in Fontainebleau, France. Its goals were to encourage global collaboration and offer scientific information and resources to support conservation efforts.
• The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species was founded in 1964. The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, the World Heritage Convention, and the Convention on Biological Diversity were all key international accords that were greatly influenced by it.
• The World Conservation Strategy, which the IUCN released in 1980 in collaboration with the UNEP and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), helped define the term “sustainable development” and set the worldwide conservation and sustainable development agenda.
• The IUCN was given official observer status by the United Nations in 1992 as a result of the escalating environmental concerns. The IUCN is currently the largest and most varied environmental network.

ZARTH App (GS-3)

News: Anyone with a smartphone can “hunt” for transients using the ZARTH app, which was created by a team of academics at the California Institute of Technology’s Centre for Data Driven Discovery.

• The ZTF Augmented Reality Transient Hunter (ZARTH) is modelled after augmented reality video games for mobile devices. It enables the user to play a game while conducting important science.
• The app uses the open-source Sky Map and updates it every day with information from the robotic telescope operated by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) at the Palomar Observatory in California.
• The 200-inch Hale reflector telescope, one of the oldest, biggest, and most potent telescopes in the world, is located at Palomar.
• Every two days, the ZTF scans the whole northern sky, and it uses the information to create huge area sky maps that are crucial for analyzing supernovae and tracking near-Earth asteroids. Transients discovered by the ZTF in real-time are fed into the app every day.
• Flaring stars (variable stars that briefly flare up), white dwarf binaries (burned remnants of dead stars that orbit one another, frequently fuse, and explode in supernovae), active galactic nuclei, and various other types are among the transients.
• Players can compete with one another to gain points and earn daily credits, which are duly reported on the leaderboards. The program rates transients according to their rarity and relevance.
• Astronomical events having lifetimes ranging from fractions of a second to weeks or years are referred to as transients. They typically involve the complete or partial destruction of an astrophysical object and are dramatic, brief phenomena.