Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft reaches spaceport

GS Paper - 3 (Space Technology)

The Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Chandrayaan-3 has reached the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota ahead of its launch planned for July. The Chandrayaan-3 mission is a follow-on to the ill-fated Chandrayaan-2 mission.

More about the Mission

1. Chandrayaan-3 consists of a lander and a rover, and it will be launched by the space agency’s Launch Vehicle Mark-III (LVM3) system.
2. The launch system’s propulsion module will carry the lander and rover configuration till it reaches a 100 kilometres lunar orbit.
3. The propulsion module will also carry the SHAPE (Spectro-polarimetry of Habitable Planet Earth) instrument, which will study the spectral and Polarimetric measurements of Earth from lunar orbit.
4. The primary objective of the Chandrayaan-3 mission is to demonstrate a soft landing on the lunar surface.
5. So far, only three countries have managed a soft landing on the Moon—the erstwhile Soviet Union, the United States, and China.

Flashback

1. ISRO attempted such a soft landing with the Chandrayaan-2 mission, which ended in failure after the Vikram lander lost contact with mission control.
2. More recently, on 25 April 2023, the Hakuto lander built by Japanese space technology firm Ispace also failed to achieve a soft landing.
3. The spacecraft took a circuitous four-month-long trip from the Earth, during which it covered a distance of 1.6 million kilometres.

EU migration deal

GS Paper - 2 (International Relations)

European Union ministers agreed on how to handle irregular arrivals of asylum-seekers and migrants, a deal hailed as a breakthrough after almost a decade of bitter feuds on the sensitive matter. As the deal took shape, a stabbing in France by a Syrian man who was granted asylum in Sweden 10 years ago drew fresh attention to Europe’s migration policies, highlighting political as well as practical challenges lying ahead of any EU migration scheme.

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

1. EU states have been trading blame over providing for the new arrivals since more than a million people – mostly fleeing the war in Syria – caught the bloc by surprise by reaching it across the Mediterranean in 2015.
2. The bloc has since tightened external borders and its asylum laws, and struck deals in the Middle East and North Africa to have more people stay there. U.N. data shows fewer than 160,000 sea migrants made it to Europe last year.
3. The bloc hopes lower irregular immigration would allow EU countries to restart cooperation to spread more evenly the task of taking care of arriving refugees and migrants.

HOW DOES THE NEW PACT ADDRESS THAT?

1. Each EU country would be assigned a share of the 30,000 people overall the bloc is expected to accommodate in its joint migration system at any given time.
2. That will be calculated based on the size of the country’s GDP and population, the number of irregular border crossings including via sea rescue operations, and more.
3. Countries unwilling to take in people would instead be able to help their hosting peers through cash – at least 20,000 euros per person a year – equipment or personnel.

WHAT ELSE IS NEW?

1. The agreement would introduce a new expedited border procedure for those deemed unlikely to win asylum to prevent them from lingering inside the bloc for years.
2. Instead, they should be sent away within six months if their asylum applications fail, one of several shortened deadlines in the deal.
3. That mechanism would apply to all those deemed dangerous, uncooperative or coming from countries with low asylum recognition rates in the EU like India or Serbia.
4. EU countries could also apply the speedy procedure to people picked up in the sea, caught while trying to get in illegally or filing for asylum at the border rather than in advance.

The ‘onset’ of the monsoon

GS Paper - 1 (Geography)

The southwest monsoon has set in over the Kerala coast, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said. This year, along with 2016 and 2019, is the most that the monsoon’s onset has been delayed in the last couple of decades — the rains hit the Kerala coast in those two earlier years as well.

What is meant by the “onset of the monsoon” over the Kerala coast?

1. The onset of the monsoon over Kerala signals the beginning of the four-month (June-September) southwest monsoon season, during which India gets more than 70% of its annual rainfall.
2. It is an important day in the economic calendar of the country. Contrary to what is sometimes assumed, the onset does not mean the first rain of the season. That can start happening in certain places even before the onset is declared.
3. For example, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands usually start receiving monsoon rainfall between 15 May and 20 May 2023, and it starts raining along the Kerala coast in the last week of May.
4. However, ‘onset’ is a technical expression with a specific definition — and the IMD does not officially declare onset until certain prescribed conditions are met.

Which determines the onset of the monsoon?

1. RAINFALL: The onset is declared if at least 60% of 14 designated meteorological stations in Kerala and Lakshadweep record at least 2.5 mm of rain for two consecutive days at any time after 10 May 2023.
2. The onset over Kerala is declared on the second day, as long as specific wind and temperature criteria are also fulfilled.
3. WIND FIELD: The IMD says that the depth of westerlies should be up to 600 hectopascal (1 hPa is equal to 1 millibar of pressure) in the area that is bound by the equator to 10ºN latitude, and from longitude 55ºE to 80ºE.
4. HEAT: The INSAT-derived Outgoing Longwave Radiation (OLR) value — which is a measure of the energy emitted to space by the Earth’s surface, oceans, and atmosphere — should be below 200 watt per sq m (wm2) in the area between the 5ºN and 10ºN latitudes, and 70ºE and 75ºE longitudes.