Blog

General Studies-III

Topic– Achievements of Indians in Science & Technology; indigenization of technology and developing new technology.

Aditya-L1 Support Cell (AL1SC)

Context:

A community service centre has been set up to bring all data on board India’s first dedicated solar space mission to a single web-based interface.

The service centre is called Aditya-L1 Support Cell (AL1SC).

What is the AL1SC?

One year before the proposed launch of India’s maiden solar mission — the Aditya L1 — Indian researchers plan to create a skilled community of solar scientists ready to use the scientific data which will emerge from the mission.

• As a first step, the Aditya-L1 Support Cell (AL1SC) has been established at the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES), which will primarily produce this required trained manpower.
• AL1SC is a joint effort of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES).
• It will be used by the guest observers in analyzing science data and preparing science observing proposals.

Aditya – L1 mission

• Aditya-I is India’s first dedicated scientific mission to study the sun.
• The Aditya-1 mission was conceived as a 400kg class satellite carrying one payload, the Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) and was planned to launch in a 800 km low earth orbit.
• A Satellite placed in the halo orbit around the Lagrangian point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/ eclipses.
• Therefore, the Aditya-1 mission has now been revised to “Aditya-L1 mission” and will be inserted in a halo orbit around the L1, which is 1.5 million km from the Earth.
• The satellite carries additional six payloads with enhanced science scope and objectives.

Key features:

• Aditya-1 was meant to observe only the solar corona.
• Aditya-L1 with additional experiments can now provide observations of Sun’s Corona (soft and hard X-ray, Emission lines in the visible and NIR), Chromosphere (UV) and photosphere (broadband filters).
• In addition, particle payloads will study the particle flux emanating from the Sun and reaching the L1 orbit.
• The magnetometer payload will measure the variation in magnetic field strength at the halo orbit around L1.
• These payloads have to be placed outside the interference from the Earth’s magnetic field and could not have been useful in the low earth orbit.

What is CORONA?

• The outer layers of the Sun, extending to thousands of km above the disc (photosphere) is termed as the corona.
• It has a temperature of more than a million degree Kelvin which is much higher than the solar disc temperature of around 6000K.
• How the corona gets heated to such high temperatures is still an unanswered question in solar physics.

What is the Lagrange Point 1?

Lagrange Points are the positions in space where the gravitational forces of a two-body system (like the Sun and the Earth) produce enhanced regions of attraction and repulsion.

• These were named after Italian-French mathematician Josephy-Louis Lagrange.
• The Lagrange Point 1(L1 point) is about 1.5 million km from Earth, or about 1/100th of the way to the Sun.
• A Satellite placed in the halo orbit around the Lagrangian point 1 (L1) has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any occultation/ eclipses.

Significance:

With the inclusion of multiple payloads, this project also provides an opportunity to solar scientists from multiple institutions within the country to participate in space based instrumentation and observations.

Thus the enhanced Aditya-L1 project will enable a comprehensive understanding of the dynamical processes of the sun and address some of the outstanding problems in solar physics.

General Studies-III

Topic– Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment.

Tso Kar Wetland

Context

India has added Tso Kar Wetland Complex in Ladakh as its 42nd Ramsar site. It is a second one in the Union Territory (UT) of Ladakh.

About Tso Kar Basin

The Tso Kar Basin is a high-altitude wetland complex.

It is called Tso Kar, meaning white lake, because of the white salt efflorescence found on the margins due to the evaporation of highly saline water.

It is consisting of two principal waterbodies,

1. Startsapuk Tso, a freshwater lake of about 438 hectares to the south, and
2. Tso Kar, a hypersaline lake of 1800 hectares to the north, situated in the Changthang region of Ladakh, India.

Important Bird Area (IBA)

• The Tso Kar Basin is an A1 Category Important Bird Area (IBA) as per Bird Life International and a key staging site in the Central Asian Flyway.
• The site is also one of the most important breeding areas of the Black-necked Crane (Grus nigricollis) in India.
• This IBA is also the major breeding area for Great Crested Grebe (Podicepscristatus), Bar-headed Geese (Anserindicus), Ruddy Shelduck (Tadornaferruginea), Brown-headed Gull (Larusbrunnicephalus), Lesser Sand-Plover (Charadriusmongolus) and many other species.

The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands

• The Ramsar Convention signed on February 2, 1971.
• It is one of the oldest inter-governmental accord signed by members countries to preserve the ecological character of their wetlands of international importance.
• The signing of the Convention on Wetlands took place in 1971 at the small Iranian town of Ramsar. Since then, the Convention on Wetlands has been known as the Ramsar Convention
• The Convention on Wetlands of International Importance holds the unique distinction of being the first modern treaty between nations aimed at conserving natural resources.

What is the Aim of Ramsar Convention?

• The Ramsar Convention’s broad aims are to halt the worldwide loss of wetlands and to conserve, through wise use and management, those that remain.
• This requires international cooperation, policy making, capacity building and technology transfer.
• Wetlands declared as Ramsar sites are protected under strict guidelines of the convention.

What are Ramsar wetlands?

• Under the Ramsar Convention, a wide variety of natural and human-made habitat types ranging from rivers to coral reefs can be classified as wetlands.
• Wetlands include swamps, marshes, billabongs, lakes, salt marshes, mudflats, mangroves, coral reefs, fens, peat bogs, or bodies of water – whether natural or artificial, permanent or temporary.
• Water within these areas can be static or flowing; fresh, brackish or saline; and can include inland rivers and coastal or marine water to a depth of six metres at low tide.
• There are even underground wetlands.

Significance of Wetlands

• Wetlands provide a wide range of important resources and ecosystem services such as food, water, fibre, groundwater recharge, water purification, flood moderation, erosion control and climate regulation.
• They are, in fact a major source of water and our main supply of freshwater comes from an array of wetlands which help soak rainfall and recharge groundwater.

 

Chrome facts for Prelims

‘Industry’ status to sports

Mizoram has become first state to grant ‘Industry’ status to sports.

• It aims to further bolster the sports activities, by attracting investment.
• The major sports are in Mizoram are football, hockey, wrestling.
• There are a number of indigenous games such as, stick fighting, Insuknawra (rod pushing), Kalchhet kal (relay race using bamboo), Inarpathai (cock fighting).

Katkari Tribe

Katkaris were historically forest dwellers, located primarily in Raigad and in parts of Palghar, Ratnagiri and Thane districts of Maharashtra as well and in some places of Gujarat.

• Katkari is one of the 75 Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups.
• The British administration had classified them under the Criminal Tribes Act, 1871.
• The name Katkari is derived from a forest-based activity – the making and barter or sale of Katechu (kath) from the khair tree (Acacia Katechu).
• It is produced by boiling wood from the Khair tree and evaporating the resulting brew.