Eastern Naval Command

♦ INS Nilgiri, arrived at Visakhapatnam and has formally joined the Eastern Naval Command on 22 June 2025.

♦ This is the first of the indigenously built Project 17A stealth frigates. Built in Mumbai, INS Nilgiri now makes the City of Destiny her home port.

♦ This state of the art warship is driven by her motto - “Adrish Yabalam, Ajeya Shauryam”.

♦ The INS Nilgiri and the other ships of its class are expected be inducted in near future to strengthen the Eastern Naval Command’s capabilities.

Indias small satellite launch rockets

♦ Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd has won the bid to privately make India's small satellite launch rockets, the country's space regulator said on 20 June 2025.

♦ HAL's wining bid was Rs.5.11 billion ($59 million). By winning the bid to make the rocket, capable of carrying 500kg payloads to low-Earth orbit, HAL will have the capability to independently build, own, and commercialise SSLV launches.

♦ The global low Earth orbit launch vehicle market was valued at $13.9 billion in 2023 and is estimated to grow to about $44 billion by 2032. 

Indian army has successfully conducted trials of the Rudrastra

♦ The Indian army has successfully conducted trials of the Rudrastra, a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) designed for deep-strike missions.

♦ The trials have been conducted at the Pokhran firing range, with the drones demonstrating their ability to take down targets at a range of over 50 km.

♦ This was developed by Solar Aerospace and Defence Limited (SDAL).

♦ This indigenous drone demonstrated its capacity to carry out cross-border attacks and neutralize high-value targets, reflecting the armed forces’ growing reliance on homegrown technology for modern warfare.

Planetary system orbiting a youthful star YSES-1

♦ Astronomers have discovered a planetary system orbiting a youthful star YSES-1 located 300 light-years away, using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).  

♦ The system's two planets, YSES-1 b and YSES-1 c, are packed with coarse, rough, and frankly irritating silica material.

♦ Astronomers say this discovery around a star that is just 16.7 million years old could hint at how the planets and moons of our 4.6 billion-year-old solar system took shape.

♦ As both planets are gas giants, they could offer astronomers an opportunity to study the real-time evolution of planets like Jupiter and Saturn.

♦ One of these extrasolar planets, or "exoplanets," YSES-1 c, has a mass around 14 times the mass of Jupiter. On YSES-1 c, this silica matter is located in clouds in its atmosphere, which gives it a reddish hue and creates sandy rains that fall inward towards its core.