Technology - General Knowledge or GK, Current Affairs for the month of December-2023 and January-2024
IIT Ropar
Gajraj Security
United Arab Emirates
As per plans, every year on Ram Navami marking Lord Ram’s birth, the Ram Lalla deity in Ayodhya’s new
Ram Mandir will receive a ‘Surya Tilak’- sunlight focused onto Ram Lalla’s forehead for 6 minutes at noon
through an arrangement of lenses and mirrors designed by Indian Scientists.
28th January 2024
The size of five stacked coins
: Elon Musk’s SpaceX lunched Axiom Space’s private Ax3 (Axiom Mission 3 astronaut mission) to the
international space station on 18th January 2024. The Crew Dragon Capsule, named ‘Freedom’ was propelled
into space atop a Falcon 9 rocket, marking the third mission organized by Houston-based Axiom Space. This
mission was the first all-European commercial astronaut mission to the ISS.
Pixxel, a space data company known for its hyperspectral earth-Imaging technology, inaugurated its first
spacecraft manufacturing facility, named ‘MegaPixxel’ in Bengaluru on 15th January 2024. The Mega-Pixxel
facility has the capacity to manage over 20 satellites concurrently, with a turnaround time of six months per
satellite.
Pixxel is the second private company to open its facility after Skyroot Aerospace, which unveiled its newly
developed HQ in Hyderabad in 2023.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries lunched an H-IIA rocket carrying the Japanese Government’s InformationGathering satellite ‘Optical-8’ on 12th January 2024. The Optical-8 satellite is designed primarily for intelligence
gathering. It is equipped advanced Optical devices to collect security information.
: An American company, led by an Individual of Indian origin, has introduced a revolutionary fuel called
ANEEL (Advanced Nuclear Energy for Enriched Life). ANEEL is a blend of Thorium and a specially enriched
Uranium termed HALEU (High Assay Low Enriched Uranium) Clean core’s ANEEL fuel can be employed in India’s
pressurized Heavy-Water Reactors (PHWRs), the Backbone of India’s nuclear fleet.
Canada has unveiled its plans to connect Calgary and Edmonton with a Fluxjet train that will run at the
speed of 621 miles or more than 999 kilometres/hr. The fully-electric vehicle will be a hybrid between an
Aircraft and a Train. Canada’s Fluxjet is comprised of only a train and a Vacuum. The train will hover
magnetically along the rail and use a combination of magnets and plasma technology to achieve speeds of
more than 621 mph.
Scientist at the Linkoping University in Sweden have unveiled an electrically conductive ‘Soil’. It can
Foster expectational growth in crops particularly barley seedlings, with a potential 50% increase in just 15 days.
This innovative soilless cultivation method is termed as ‘hydroponics’
China, on 9th January 2024, sent a new astronomical satellite shaped like a lotus into space to observe
mysterious transient phenomenon in the universe that flicker like fireworks. The satellite named ‘Einstein
Probe’, which uses new X-ray detection technology inspired by the functioning of a lobster eye, was launched
by a Long March-2C carrier rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in southwest Chaina’s Sichuan
Province. The 12 ‘petals’ are 12 modules consisting of wide-field X-ray telescopes (WXT), while the two
‘stamens’ consist of two modules of follow-up X-ray telescopes (FXT).
Researchers at Google DeepMind and Stanford University, on 3rd January, announced Mobile ALOHA, a low-cost open-source hardware system for bi-manual teleoperation. It is a humanoid robot that can be remote
operated by a user and perform autonomously by imitation learning. ALOHA is a lightweight robot walking at a human speed of 1.42 meter a second and can carry up to 100-kilogramme weight.
The Indian Space Research Organization launched the PSLV-C58 X-ray Polarimeter Satellite (XPoSat)
mission on 1st January 2024. This launch took place in PSLV’s 60th mission from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre
in Sriharikota. XPoSat is the first dedicated scientific satellite from ISRO to carry out research in space-based
polarization measurement of X-ray emission from celestial sources. It carries two payloads, namely POLIX
(Polarimeter Instrument in X-rays) and XSPECT (X-ray spectroscopy and Timing). XPoSat is the world’s second
satellite-based mission dedicated to making X-ray polarimetry measurements after NASA’s Imaging X-ray
Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE).
During the mission, the PSLV Orbital Experimental Module-3 (POEM-3) experiment was also executed to meet
the objective of 10 other payloads.