15 May 2024

GS 3 : [Science &  Tech : Space Tech]

ISRO chairperson S Somanath has planned to launch Chandrayaan 4 to bring back samples from the Moon in four years.

Chandrayaan 4: A Next Moon Mission

• After Chandrayaan- 3’s success and Aditya-L1 launch, ISRO aims to bring back moon samples with Chandrayaan-4 in approximately four years.
• ISRO chairperson S Somanath shared this vision while discussing the space agency’s Vision 2047.
• About Chandrayaan 4 Mission:
• It is a lunar sample return mission that will land and thereafter be able to bring back the sample of the lunar surface.
• Rover: This mission is expected to be more complex than its predecessor, Chandrayaan-3 which had a rover of 30 kg and Chandrayaan-4 plans to land a massive 350 kg rover. 
• The rover will have an exploration area of 1 km x 1 km which is significantly larger than Chandrayaan-3’s 500 meters x 500 meters.
• Landing on the Moon: The Chandrayaan 4 mission aims to perform a precise landing on the Moon’s rim (area yet to be explored).

Space Agency Vision 2047:

• Space faring nation: India to look at space as a “strategic asset” of the country aiming to  become a world-leading space-faring nation by 2047.
• Roadmap: S. Somanath mentioned four levels the country needs to succeed i.e. strategic, spacecraft, innovation and exploration. 
• Space parks, space tourism, global space data solution, global space manufacturing hub, and space mining.

NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar)

• NISAR is a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) observatory jointly developed by NASA and ISRO. 
• It is an SUV-size satellite weighing 2,800 kilograms.
• NISAR will be the first satellite mission to use two different radar frequencies (L-band and S-band) to measure changes in our planet's surface.
• SAR is capable of penetrating clouds and can collect data day and night regardless of the weather conditions.
• Mission Objectives:
• It will measure Earth’s changing ecosystems, dynamic surfaces, and ice masses, providing information about biomass, natural hazards, sea level rise, and groundwater.
• NISAR will observe Earth’s land and ice-covered surfaces globally with 12-day regularity on ascending and descending passes. 

Recently, the night sky was lit up by northern lights, or aurora borealis, at Hanle village in Ladakh.

Solar storms

• A solar storm is a term used to describe the atmospheric consequences that certain Sun-related occurrences have on Earth.
• Solar storms result when a Sun generates powerful energy bursts like solar flares and coronal mass ejections. High-speed electrical charges and magnetic fields are rapidly sent towards the Earth by these occurrences

About Auroras

• These are essentially natural lights that appear as bright, swirling curtains in the night sky and can be seen in a range of colours, including blue, red, yellow, green, and orange.
• These lights primarily appear near the poles of both the northern and southern hemispheres all year round but sometimes they expand to lower latitudes.
• These are called aurora borealis in the north and in the south, it is known as the aurora australis.

Why do auroras occur?

• It is due to activity on the surface of the Sun.
• The star continuously releases a stream of charged particles, mainly electrons and protons, and magnetic fields called the solar wind.
• As the solar wind approaches the Earth, it is deflected by the planet’s magnetic field, which acts like a protective shield.
• However, some of the charged particles are trapped in the magnetic field and they travel down the magnetic field lines at the north and south poles into the upper atmosphere of the Earth.
• These particles then interact with different gases present there, resulting in tiny flashes that light up the night sky.
• When solar wind particles collide with oxygen, a green colour light is produced. Interaction with nitrogen produces shades of blue and purple.
• Auroras expand to midlatitudes when the solar wind is extremely strong.
• This happens when the activity on the Sun’s surface goes up, leading to solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which are essentially extra bursts of energy in the solar wind.
• In such cases, the solar wind is so intense that it can result in a geomagnetic storm, also known as a magnetic storm — a temporary disturbance of the Earth’s magnetic field. It is during a magnetic storm that auroras can be seen in the mid-latitudes.

Current Status: Global Efforts to Regulate AI

• Japan’s Social Principles of Human-Human-Centric AI: manifests the basic principles of an AI -capable society: human-centricity; education/literacy; data protection; ensuring safety; fair competition; fairness, accountability and transparency, and innovation.
• Europe’s AI Act:   It was passed in December 2023 and has concrete red lines like prohibiting arbitrary and real-time remote biometric identification in public spaces for law enforcement, bans emotion detection, etc.
• In November 2023, the ‘Bletchley Declaration’ by AI Safety Summit called for, to work together in an inclusive manner to ensure human centric, trustworthy and responsible AI,

• AI that is safe, and supports the good of all through existing international fora and other relevant initiatives, and
• to promote cooperation to address the broad range of risks posed by AI.

• In July 2023, the US government announced that it had persuaded the companies OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Meta, etc to abide by “voluntary rules” to “ensure their products are safe”.

Indian Efforts

• Digital Personal Data Protection Act in 2023: The government of India also recently enacted a new privacy law, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act in 2023, which it can leverage to address some of the privacy concerns concerning AI platforms.
• Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence: India is a member of the GPAI. The 2023 GPAI Summit was recently held in New Delhi, where GPAI experts presented their work on responsible AI, data governance, and the future of work, innovation, and commercialization. 
• The National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence #AIForAll strategy, by NITI Aayog: It featured AI research and development guidelines focused on healthcare, agriculture, education, “smart” cities and infrastructure, and smart mobility and transformation.
• Principles for Responsible AI: In February 2021, the NITI Aayog released Principles for Responsible AI, an approach paper that explores the various ethical considerations of deploying AI solutions in India.