Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) launched

GS Paper - 3 (Space Technology)

The European Space Agency (ESA) launched the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, or Juice, mission on 13 April 2023 from its spaceport in French Guiana on an Ariane 5 launcher. Planned to reach Jupiter in 2031, the mission aims to carry out a detailed exploration of the Solar System’s largest planet and its icy moons, which potentially have habitable environments.

What is the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (Juice) mission?

1. The Juice “will make detailed observations of the giant gas planet and its three large ocean-bearing moons — Ganymede, Callisto and Europa”, by using remote sensing, geophysical and in situ instruments.
2. Scientists for quite some time have known that these three moons of Jupiter possess icy crusts, which they believe contain oceans of liquid water underneath, making them potentially habitable.
3. Juice will help probe these water bodies by creating detailed maps of the moons’ surfaces and enable the scientists, for the first time, to look beneath them.
4. Although the mission will examine all three moons, the main focus will be on Ganymede, as it is the largest moon in the Solar System — larger than Pluto and Mercury — and the only one to generate its own magnetic field.
5. Juice, which will move into Ganymede’s orbit after approximately four of arriving at Jupiter, will use its suite of ten sophisticated instruments to measure how Ganymede rotates, its gravity, its shape and interior structure, its magnetic field, its composition, and to penetrate its icy crust using radar down to a depth of about nine km.
6. Another primary goal of the mission is to create a comprehensive picture of Jupiter by trying to understand its origin, history and evolution.
7. Scientists believe that this would help them provide “much-needed insight into how such a planetary system and its constituents are formed and evolved over time, as well as revealing how possibly habitable environments can arise in Jupiter-like systems around other stars.”
8. Juice will also analyse the chemistry, structure, dynamics, weather, and climate of Jupiter and its ever-changing atmosphere.

Flashback

1. Juice has been constructed by an industrial consortium led by Airbus Defence and Space — a division of the Airbus group responsible for the development and manufacturing of the corporation’s defence and space products — based on the parameters provided by the ESA.
2. Only two other spacecraft have ever examined Jupiter: the Galileo probe, which orbited the gas giant between 1995 and 2003, and Juno, which has been circling the planet since 2016.
3. Notably, by the time Juice reaches Jupiter, another spacecraft, NASA’s Europa Clipper, would already be orbiting the planet — scheduled to be launched in October this year, Europa Clipper would arrive at Jupiter in 2030 and aims to study its Europa moon.

Jallianwala Bagh massacre

GS Paper - 1 (History)

On 13 April 1919, what was planned as a protest gathering of Indians in a compound called Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, Punjab, in the then British-ruled India, witnessed violence that would become one of the most lasting memories of the barbarity of colonial rule.

What happened at Jallianwala Bagh?

1. 13 April saw celebrations for the Sikh festival of Baisakhi, which marks the onset of spring and the harvest of winter crops.
2. Simultaneously, the movement for independence from British rule had been steadily gaining ground at that point, and an event was held at Jallianwala Bagh to defy colonial orders and protest against the recently passed Rowlatt Bills.
3. These Bills curtailed the civil liberties of Indians and let colonial forces arrest people without any warrant or trial.
4. One of the Acts was pushed through the Legislative Council ignoring objections of elected Indian representatives, leading to resentment among Indians. Some violent protests had been witnessed in cities of Delhi, Bombay (now Mumbai) and Lahore as well, even as MK Gandhi called for the launch of a non-violent peaceful protest at the time.
5. Sir Michael O’ Dwyer imposed martial rule in Lahore and Amritsar on 11 April, but the order reached Amritsar only on 14 April. He also sent Colonel Dyer, who was then holding the temporary rank of Brigadier General, from the Jalandhar cantonment to Amritsar.
6. On 13 April, a Sunday, Col Dyer’s troops marched through the town to warn against the assembly of more than four people. But the announcement did not reach most people, and devotees headed towards the Golden Temple.
7. By 4 pm, many gathered for a public meeting against the arrest of Dr Satyapal and Dr Saifuddin Kitchlew for opposing the Rowlatt Act.
8. Dyer entered the Bagh through a narrow alley, the only entry and exit path. The 1920 report noted that Dyer entered Jallianwala Bagh with 25 Gorkha soldiers and 25 Baluchis armed with rifles, 40 Gorkhas armed with only Khukris and two armoured cars. A crowd of around 10 to 12,000 was gathered there at the time.
9. Without giving the crowd any warning to disperse, which he considered unnecessary as they were in breach of his proclamation, he ordered his troops to fire and the firing continued for about ten minutes,” the report said. It noted that no one in the crowd was carrying firearms though some may have been carrying sticks.
10. In all,the soldiers fired 1,650 rounds. A later investigation brought the number of killed up to 379. No figure was given for the wounded and it was thought that it may have been three times the dead. Indian leaders expressed their anger and protested in response to the killings. Notably, Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore gave up his knighthood.

What happened to Dyer after Jallianwala Bagh?

1. The Hunter Committee condemned the incident but did not impose any punishment on Dyer.
2. Ultimately, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army directed Brig Gen Dyer to resign his appointment as Brigade Commander and informed him that he will receive no further employment in India.
3. However, Dyer remained a divisive figure at the time. Imperialists at home lauded Dyer for his actions against what they termed as unrest in India.
4. Conservative newspapers and organisations in the UK later arranged for a fund for Dyer and collected a significant amount.
5. Then MP and later Prime Minister Winston Churchill said that Dyer’s actions could not be repeated or justified, stating in the UK Parliament

Magneto-resistance Graphene

GS Paper -3 (Science & Technology)

Researchers in the UK, led by Nobel laureate Andre Geim, have discovered another property of graphene – a single-atom-thick layer of carbon atoms bonded in a honeycomb pattern – that further distinguishes this ‘wonder’ material.

More about the news:

It found that graphene displays an anomalous giant magneto resistance (GMR) at room temperature.

What is GMR?

• It says, when a conductor is sandwiched between two ferromagnetic materials (commonly, metals attracted to magnets, like iron). When the materials are magnetised in the same direction, the electrical resistance in the conductor is low. When the directions are opposite each other, the resistance increases.
• The magneto resistance observed in the graphene-based device was “almost 100-times higher than that observed in other known semimetals in this magnetic field range.
• The effect is due to the way electrons in the conductor scatter off electrons in the ferromagnets depending on the orientation of the latter’s spin, which is affected by the direction of the magnetic field.
• Conventional GMR devices are cooled to low temperatures to suppress the kinetic energy of their constituent particles, keeping them from deflecting the electrons moving past them. In graphene, the researchers found this suppression unnecessary.
• GMR is the result of the electrical resistance of a conductor being affected by magnetic fields in adjacent materials.
• It is used in hard disk drives and magneto-resistive RAM in computers, biosensors, automotive sensors, micro-electromechanical systems, and medical imagers.
• GMR-based devices are particularly used to sense magnetic fields. The new study has found that a graphene-based device, unlike conventional counterparts, wouldn’t need to be cooled to a very low temperature to sense these fields.

What did the study find?

In their study, the magneto-resistance in monolayer graphene at 27º C held between two layers of boron nitride increased by 110%,under a field of 0.1 Tesla. To compare, the magneto resistance in these conditions increases by less than 1% in normal metals.

U.S. aviation retains India’s safety category

GS Paper -2 (International Relations)

The aviation safety regulator of the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration, has retained the “Category 1” status for India’s aviation safety oversight following a review.

More about the news:

• The International Aviation Safety Assessment (IASA) programme of the FAA determines whether a country’s oversight of its airlines that operate or wish to operate to the U.S. or enter into codeshare partnerships with U.S. carriers comply with safety standards established by the UN aviation watchdog, International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
• The FAA has informed the DGCA [Directorate General of Civil Aviation] that India meets the international standards for aviation safety oversight of the Chicago Convention and its Annexes and continues to retain FAA IASA Category 1 status which was last assessed in July 2018.
• It also added that the FAA has stated that the DGCA has “demonstrated a commitment towards ensuring an effective safety oversight of India’s aviation system and appreciated the positive manner in which DGCA has worked with them”.
• The DGCA said; the assessment by the ICAO as well as the FAA is a testimony to India’s commitment of having an effective safety oversight for its civil aviation system.
• The IASA program focuses on three broad areas, which include personnel licensing, operation of aircraft and airworthiness of aircraft.
• The FAA conducted the IASA program over a one-year period which included physical audits from October 25 to October 29, 2021 and a further review in July and September 2022.
• In the recent ICAO audit conducted in November last year, India scored an Effective Implementation (EI) of 85.65% from the previous EI of 69.95%.

Flashback:

ICAO:

• ICAO is funded and directed by 193 national governments to support their diplomacy and cooperation in air transport as signatory states to the Chicago Convention (1944).
• Its core function is to maintain an administrative and expert bureaucracy supporting these diplomatic interactions, and to research new air transport policy and standardization innovations as directed and endorsed by governments through the ICAO Assembly, or by the ICAO Council which the assembly elects.
• Industry and civil society groups, and other concerned regional and international organizations, also participate in the exploration and development of new standards at ICAO in their capacity as ‘Invited Organizations’.
• In addition to these core diplomatic and research capabilities, ICAO also serves as a critical coordination platform in civil aviation through its seven Regional Offices.
• It also conducts educational outreach, develops coalitions, and conducts auditing, training, and capacity building activities worldwide per the needs and priorities governments identify and formalize.

Not a global regulator:

• The stipulations ICAO standards contain never supersede the primacy of national regulatory requirements. It is always the local, national regulations which are enforced in, and by, sovereign states, and which must be legally adhered to by air operators making use of applicable airspace and airports.
• They do not have any authority over national governments in the areas of international priority they are established for. 
• They can’t arbitrarily close or restrict a country’s airspace, shut down routes, or condemn airports or airlines for poor safety performance or customer service.

Exercise Cope India 23

GS Paper -2 (International Relations)

Indian Air Force (IAF) fighters Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), Rafale, SU-30MKI and Jaguars are all set to undertake manoeuvres with U.S. Air Force (USAF) F-15 fighters and B-1B long-range bombers, under the second phase of on-going bilateral air Exercise Cope India 23.

More about the news:

• In a rare gesture, General Kenneth S. Wilsbach, Commander, U.S. Pacific Air Forces (COMPACAF) who is visiting India, undertook a sortie in a Russian origin SU-30MKI fighter of IAF, during the exercise at Kalaikunda air base.
• This segment of the exercise will witness participation of B-1B bombers of USAF. F-15 fighter aircraft of the USAF will also join the exercise subsequently.
• The IAF element will include the Su-30MKI, Rafale, Tejas and Jaguar fighter aircraft. Japan is taking part in the exercise as an observer.
• The exercise will be supported by aerial refuellers, Airborne Warning and Control System and Airborne Early Warning and Control aircraft of the IAF.
• The first phase of the exercise began with practising air-mobility components involving transport aircraft of both countries.
• This is the first time ever that U.S. bomber will be taking part in a military exercise in India. B-1B bombers had earlier done fly-byduring Aero India on two occasions.
• With this participation, the crew have an opportunity to train with one another and incorporate the bombers into the scenarios, so that everybody on all sides has a chance to see how they operate and provide a chance to improve our tactics, techniques and procedures”.