Science & Tech

Story hook

23 August 2023, 6:04 PM IST. Mission Control at the ISRO Telemetry, Tracking and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bengaluru goes silent for the last 20 minutes of descent. Chandrayaan-3's Vikram lander, with its on-board Pragyan rover, is on autonomous descent from 25 km altitude. At 6:04 PM, telemetry confirms touchdown — 70.9°S, 23.7°E on the lunar surface near the south pole. India becomes the first nation to land on the lunar south pole, and only the fourth ever to soft-land on the moon, after the US, USSR, and China.

Two years later, 6 December 2024, a different room — ISRO's SpaceX Falcon 9 launch viewing facility — watches as Bengaluru-based Pixxel orbits Fireflies — India's first private high-resolution hyperspectral satellite constellation. That same year, India approves the Bharatiya Antariksh Station (BAS) plan for a 2035 launch, India's own modular space station. In December 2024, ISRO launches the SpaDeX mission to demonstrate satellite docking — a critical capability for the station and for crewed Gaganyaan flights expected by 2026.

Indian Science & Tech current affairs threads four streams: space (ISRO + private), defence tech (DRDO + acquisitions), deep tech (AI, semiconductors, quantum), and biotech. Together they tell the story of India's 2024-25 ambition to be a knowledge-economy heavyweight.

Why this matters for UPSC

S&T current affairs delivers 2-3 Prelims MCQs every cycle — overwhelmingly factual (which mission, what payload, what acronym, what orbit). For Mains GS-III, S&T appears as an applied theme (defence indigenisation, semiconductor policy, biotechnology) and overlaps with internal security + economy. Interview boards routinely probe ISRO milestones, recent defence acquisitions, and India's AI policy.