Science and Technology News Questions and Answers

Answer: C

The mission commander was Peggy Whitson.

Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4) launched on 25 June 2025 and docked with the International Space Station the next day. The American astronaut Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut who holds the US record for total time in space, commanded it.

Shubhanshu Shukla of the Indian Air Force was the mission pilot, and became the first Indian to visit the ISS. Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski of Poland and Tibor Kapu of Hungary were the mission specialists.

Answer: B

Studio Bot was developed by Google.

Google announced Studio Bot at its I/O developer conference in May 2023 as an AI-powered coding assistant built into Android Studio, the official environment for building Android apps. It could generate code, fix errors and answer questions about Android development.

Microsoft's AI coding assistant is GitHub Copilot. Intel and Apple did not produce a tool named Studio Bot.

Answer: C

The Draconids are a meteor shower.

The Draconid meteor shower occurs every year in early October, peaking around 8 October. Its meteors appear to come from the constellation Draco (the Dragon), which gives the shower its name, and they are debris left by the comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner.

The term has nothing to do with defence systems, software bugs or marine species; it was in the news because of the annual shower.

Answer: B

Statements (i) and (iv) are not correct, so the answer is (i) and (iv).

The Hunter's Moon is the first full moon after the Harvest Moon, so it usually falls in October, not December, which makes statement (i) wrong. 'Pagan Black Moon' is not one of its names, so statement (iv) is wrong too.

Statements (ii) and (iii) are correct: among the traditional names given to October's full moon are the 'Drying Rice Moon' and the 'Sanguine' or 'Blood' Moon. So any option that counts (ii) or (iii) as incorrect is wrong.

Answer: C

He readjusted to life on earth at Houston.

Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla (printed 'Shubhansu') flew to the International Space Station on the Axiom-4 mission in June 2025, the first Indian to visit the station. After splashdown off California on 15 July 2025, he went through about a week of supervised rehabilitation in Houston, Texas, to readapt to Earth's gravity.

Hamilton and Washington had no role in the recovery, and Lucknow is his home town, where he was welcomed later.

Answer: C

India's Mars Mission was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre.

The Mars Orbiter Mission (Mangalyaan) was launched on 5 November 2013 by the PSLV-C25 rocket from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, ISRO's launch site. It entered Mars orbit on 24 September 2014.

The other places are ISRO institutions that do not launch rockets. The ISRO Satellite Centre in Bangalore built the spacecraft, the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre at Thiruvananthapuram designs launch vehicles, and the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology is a university.

Answer: C

The world's first wireless charging station for electric taxis was introduced in Norway.

Oslo, the Norwegian capital, began installing induction charging plates at taxi ranks in 2019, so that electric taxis could recharge while waiting in line without plugging in. Norway has the highest share of electric cars in the world.

Italy, Canada and Sweden were not the first to introduce wireless e-cab charging.

Answer: D

Albania's AI minister is named Diella.

In September 2025 Albania's Prime Minister Edi Rama presented Diella, an AI-generated virtual official, as a member of his cabinet responsible for public procurement, with the stated aim of making tenders free of corruption. The name means 'sun' in Albanian. Diella had earlier served as a virtual assistant on the government's e-Albania services portal.

Baila, Coira and Edira are invented names that sound similar; none of them is the official.

Answer: B

The 2014 Indian Science Congress was held in Jammu.

The 101st Indian Science Congress took place at the University of Jammu from 3 to 7 February 2014, inaugurated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Its theme was innovations in science and technology for inclusive development.

Srinagar, Shimla and Dehradun did not host the 2014 session. The 100th session, in 2013, had been held in Kolkata.

Answer: C

The satellite was EOS-01.

ISRO launched EOS-01, an earth observation satellite with a radar imaging payload for agriculture, forestry and disaster management, on PSLV-C49 on 7 November 2020 from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh. Nine customer satellites from other countries flew on the same launch.

SARAL is an Indo-French ocean-studies satellite launched in 2013, and INSAT-3DR a weather satellite launched in 2016. The radar imaging satellites of the RISAT series do not include a 'RISAT-26'.