The Indian Navy commissioned INS Mahe

♦ The Indian Navy commissioned INS Mahe, the first vessel of the Mahe-class Anti-Submarine Warfare Shallow Water Craft (ASW-SWC) on 24 November 2025. The ceremony took place at the Naval Dockyard in Mumbai. 

♦ INS Mahe is built by Cochin Shipyard Limited and measures 78 metres in length, displaces about 1,100 tonnes, has an 11-metre beam, and carries a crew of roughly 60. This is designed for high-tempo ASW missions, coastal patrol, underwater surveillance, and mine-laying in shallow and constrained waters where larger ships cannot operate effectively. 

♦ It uses twin-shaft diesel propulsion generating over 6 MW of power, giving it a top speed of 25 knots, a range of 1,800 nautical miles at 14 knots, and an endurance of 14 days.

♦ INS Mahe is named after the historic coastal town of Mahe on the Malabar Coast. Its crest features the Urumi, a flexible sword from Kalarippayattu, symbolising agility, precision, and fluid lethality.

♦ INS Mahe is the first of eight ships in the class being built by CSL, with the remaining seven scheduled for delivery through 2027.

Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO)

♦ A Memorandum of Understanding between Gati Shakti Vishwavidyalaya (GSV) and Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) was signed in New Delhi. GSV and DRDO joined hands to develop smart technological solutions for national security. 

♦ The MoU shall serve as a medium for collaborative studies and R&D in the areas of Logistics Management, Operational Logistics at tactical, operational, and strategic levels, for analysing concepts and validating operational logistics plans, Chip Design & Hardware Security, and Homomorphic/Blockchain-based Encryption.

♦ Gati Shakti Vishwavidyalaya (GSV), India's first University in the Transportation and Logistics sector, was established as a Central University by the Act of Parliament in 2022.

♦ Working under the Ministry of Railways (Govt. of India), the University covers the entire transportation sector, including Railways, Highways, Ports, Aviation, Maritime, Shipping, Inland Waterways, Urban Transport and complete Logistics and supply chain networks.

Defence Research and Development Organisation

♦ A new generation of man-portable autonomous underwater vehicles (MP-AUVs) was successfully developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation. The system comprises multiple autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) equipped with side scan sonar and underwater cameras as primary payloads for real-time detection of mine-like objects. 

♦ The onboard deep learning based target recognition algorithms enable autonomous classification, significantly reducing operator workload and mission time.

♦ The MP-AUVs have been developed by the DRDO's Naval Science and Technological Laboratory (NSTL) in Visakhapatnam.

ESCAPADE

♦ Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin launched two NASA satellites atop its giant New Glenn rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. It successfully sending the US space agency's ESCAPADE (Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorer) mission on its journey to Mars by inserting the twin spacecraft into the designated loiter orbit. 

♦ The ESCAPADE twin spacecraft, built by Rocket Lab, will study how the magnetic environment of Mars is impacted by the Sun. It will investigate how a never-ending, million-mile-per-hour stream of particles from the Sun, known as the solar wind, has gradually stripped away much of the Martian atmosphere, causing the planet to cool and its surface water to evaporate. Led by the University of California, Berkeley, the mission will help NASA prepare for future human exploration of Mars.

♦ After a 10-month journey, ESCAPADE will arrive at Mars by September 2027, becoming the first coordinated dual-spacecraft mission to enter orbit around another planet. It will begin the science campaign in June 2028.

♦ Currently, Earth and Mars are positioned on opposite sides of the Sun, making interplanetary travel between them more challenging. Rather than heading directly to Mars, the twin spacecraft will first head to a location in space a million miles from Earth called Lagrange point 2, NASA explained. In November 2026, when the two planets align more closely in their orbits, NASA’s ESCAPADE spacecraft will swing back toward Earth and use its gravity to perform a slingshot manoeuvr, propelling itself toward Mars.

INS Ikshak launched

♦ Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Dinesh Kumar Tripathi commissioned INS Ikshak, the Indian Navy’s third indigenously designed and built Survey Vessel (large) in Kochi on 6 November 2025.

♦ Built by Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers in Kolkata, ‘Ikshak’ stands as a major success for the government’s Aatmanirbhar Bharat initiative, boasting over 80 per cent indigenous content. 

♦ The vessel will be the first of its class to be based at the Southern Naval Command.

♦ Named after the Sanskrit word for ‘Guide,’ the ship is equipped with advanced hydrographic and oceanographic tools, including multi-beam sonars and Autonomous Underwater Vehicles. 

LVM3-M5

♦ India’s space agency ISRO successfully launched the LVM3-M5 rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on 2 November 2025.

♦ The rocket carried CMS-03, weighing about 4,410 kilograms, the country’s heaviest communication satellite ever sent to space.

♦ It marked the fifth operational flight of the LVM3 launcher.

♦ The satellite will provide multi-band communication services across India and nearby ocean regions.

♦ It will boost secure data, voice, and video links for both civilian and strategic use.

♦ The CMS-03, a multiband communication satellite placed in the geosynchronous orbit from where it would appear stationary relative to Earth, is now the most advanced satellite serving the needs of the Indian Navy.

♦ Also known as the GSAT-7R, the CMS-03 is the replacement for GSAT-7 satellite, launched in 2013 on Ariane-5 rocket, which has reached the end of its lifespan.

♦ ISRO has launched a satellite that was heavier than this.

♦ The GSAT-11 launched in 2018 weighed over 5,800 kg but had used the European Ariane-5 rocket.