Section

Science & Space

ISRO and the missions, the scientists, the discoveries and the health science behind the headlines.

A 2,367 kg Satellite Launched on 4 September 2026 Is India's First Imaging Satellite for Geosynchronous Orbit, and Three Engine Burns Had Lifted It to About 35,000 km by 7 September

The 19th GSLV flew with its cryogenic third stage and released India's heaviest GSLV payload yet. Here are the orbit numbers ISRO has published, the imaging figures reported at the launch, and what is still unconfirmed.

India's 500 MWe Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam Reached First Criticality at 8:25 pm on 6 April 2026, Opening the Second Stage of Homi Bhabha's Three-Stage Nuclear Plan

A sodium-cooled reactor designed by IGCAR and built by BHAVINI went critical after about 22 years of construction. What it breeds, what it cost, and what stands between this step and power on the grid.

Gaganyaan's Escape System Passed Its First Flight Test on 21 October 2023, and Two Chinook Drops Have Since Validated the Parachutes Ahead of the Uncrewed G1 Flight

The dated record of each Gaganyaan test, from the escape-system flight of October 2023 to the parachute drop of April 2026, and the targets officials have given for TV-D2 and for G1 with a robot in the crew seat.

NASA's Europa Clipper Launched on 14 October 2024, Passes Earth on 3 December 2026 and Will Make 49 Close Flybys of Jupiter's Ocean Moon From 2031

An ice-penetrating radar, a magnetometer on an 8.5-metre boom and a vault against Jupiter's radiation: the route, the payload and the contested evidence behind NASA's Europa mission, plus where ESA's Juice fits.

GPS Satellite Clocks Gain 38 Microseconds a Day, the US Space Force Runs the System, and India's NavIC Is Down to Three Navigation Satellites

The blue dot on a phone map is a stopwatch reading. Four countries and blocs run the satellite systems behind it, India's own regional system is down to three, and pilots near Delhi have reported fake signals.

India's Space Station Has Approval for One of Its Five Modules, an Estimated Cost of ₹1,763 Crore and a Launch Target of 2028

The ₹20,193 crore figure is often attached to the station itself. The Cabinet text and the Parliament replies show what it covers, what the first module is priced at, and which parts of the plan have no sanction yet.

GenomeIndia Sequenced 10,074 People From 83 Population Groups, and a Preprint Counts 44 Million Variants Missing From Global Databases

The number 99 in the official figures counts collection sites, not communities. Behind the 10,000-genome milestone sit a short Nature Genetics comment, an unreviewed 2026 atlas and a controlled-access system that, in 2025, offered variant files rather than downloadable raw reads.

India's Rs 6,003.65 Crore Quantum Mission Has Four Research Hubs, a 64-Qubit Processor on the Government Record, a 1,000 km Quantum Communication Network and 17 Supported Startups

The mission has set up four research hubs, backed 17 startups and reported a 64-qubit processor and a 1,000 km quantum communication network. Who runs the hubs, how much money has moved, and what the computing targets measure.

Voyager 1 Will Be One Light-Day From Earth on 18 November 2026, 49 Years After Its Launch, With Two of Its Ten Instruments Still Running

A memory chip failed on Voyager 1 in 2023, a power supply loses about 4 watts a year, and the instruments go off one by one. What NASA has published about both probes up to 8 October 2026, and which dates are inferences.

What the 33 Science Nobel Prizes of 2016 to 2026 Were For, from Gravitational Waves to mRNA Vaccines to AlphaFold

Gravitational waves, gene-editing scissors, mRNA shots and an AI that folds proteins all won prizes in this stretch. Here is what each of the 33 was awarded for, in a sentence or two each.

Aditya-L1 Flew 1.5 Million Kilometres to Watch the Sun, Then Logged the Eruptions Behind the Strongest Geomagnetic Storm Since 2003

A PSLV lifted off at 11.50 am, and 126 days later a spacecraft built by Indian labs was circling a point where the pulls of Earth and Sun balance. Here is what each of its seven instruments does, and what they have found.

Four Air Force Test Pilots Were Named India's Astronauts in February 2024, and One of Them Has Already Flown to the Space Station

A crew capsule was pulled clear of a test rocket at 17 kilometres and landed under ten parachutes. Behind that flight are four pilots, a contract with Russia, and launch dates that moved more than once and are given here with their sources.

NISAR, the NASA-ISRO Radar Satellite Launched on 30 July 2025, Has Now Mapped a Sinking Mexico City, the Ground Shift After a Venezuelan Earthquake and an Erupting Kamchatka Volcano

A 12-metre gold-plated mesh dish, two radar wavelengths and an Indian launch pad. Here is what the NISAR satellite does, who can use its free data, and the first results from ice, cities, faults and volcanoes.

Jagadish Chandra Bose Rang a Bell and Fired Gunpowder by Radio Waves in Calcutta in 1895, Took a US Patent on a Crystal Detector in 1904, and Spent His Later Years Measuring How Fast Plants Grow

A railway timetable lined with tinfoil, a bell rung by radio waves in a Calcutta college, a patent whose story is told two ways, and Royal Society referees who could not agree on his plant instruments.

A Madras Clerk's Letter of 16 January 1913 Held Formulas That Defeated G. H. Hardy, and Ramanujan's Last Letter of 1920 Waited 82 Years for a Theory to Explain It

A list of unproved formulas, a taxi ride to Putney, a partition formula that missed by four thousandths, and a final letter that mathematicians needed until 2002 to make sense of.

India Built Its Own Cryogenic Rocket Engine After Russia Froze a Sale in 1993, and It Took Until 5 January 2014 to Fly Successfully

India ordered seven finished Russian stages without the technology behind them. Its own engine failed within a second in 2010 and flew in 2014, and a larger Indian engine later powered the upper stage of the rocket that launched Chandrayaan-3.

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Worked Out the Mass Limit for White Dwarf Stars at 19 on a 1930 Voyage From Bombay, Shared the 1983 Nobel Prize in Physics, and Has a NASA X-ray Observatory Named for Him

A Madras physics graduate repeated a Cambridge professor's calculation with Einstein's relativity added, and a ceiling on stellar remnants appeared. Here are the ship, the 1931 paper, the 1935 meeting in London and what the number is used for now.

Homi Bhabha Asked the Tata Trust for a Physics Institute on 12 March 1944, Had the Apsara Reactor Critical by 4 August 1956, and Died on Mont Blanc on 24 January 1966 at 56

A letter to a charitable trust, a swimming-pool reactor built from British drawings, and a Boeing 707 on a glacier ridge. The record behind each, with the points historians dispute marked.

Kalpana Chawla Grew Up Watching Flying Club Planes Over Karnal, Orbited the Earth 252 Times on Columbia in 1997 and Became the First Indian-Born Woman in Space

She watched Pushpak trainers from a bicycle in a small Haryana town and ended up running the robot arm on Columbia. Here is the documented path, and the satellite, awards, hospital and school auditorium that carry her name.

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam Led the SLV-3 Team That Put Rohini Into Orbit in 1980, Headed India's Five-Missile Development Programme, and Won the 2002 Presidential Election With 89.58 Per Cent of the Electoral College Vote

A boy who sold newspapers in Rameswaram, a rocket failure in 1979 that he took responsibility for, and a farewell address that counts the farmers and students he met. The dated record, and the few places where the sources differ.

India's Mars Orbiter Mission Reached Orbit on Its First Try for ₹450 Crore and Worked More Than Seven Years on a Six-Month Plan

The fourth burn fell short, the main engine then sat unused for more than nine months, and a four-second test two days before arrival cleared it for the long burn that put India's first Mars orbiter into orbit. The record, step by step.

Shubhanshu Shukla Became the First Indian on the International Space Station in June 2025, 41 Years After Rakesh Sharma, and Ran Seven Indian Experiments in Orbit

He spoke to India ten minutes after liftoff, shared gajar ka halwa with an international crew, and came home with samples from seven Indian labs. The flight as the agencies and the astronaut recorded it.

ISRO Docked Two 220 kg Satellites in Orbit on 16 January 2025, Separated Them on 13 March, Docked Them Again on 20 April and Passed Power Between Them on 21 April

A PSLV launch on 30 December 2024, a trial run to 3 metres, contact on 16 January, a second autonomous docking on 20 April and power passed between the satellites on 21 April. What SpaDeX proved, and the follow-up flights ISRO is studying.

ICMR Counted 101 Million Indians With Diabetes, and Its Own Diet Survey Found Millet Flour Supplies Just 1.4 Percent of What They Eat

ICMR found diabetes in 11.4 percent of Indian adults in 2023, and in 2025 its diet survey found refined rice and flour supplying most of the carbohydrate on the plate. Those studies name white rice, refined flour and sugar. Chilli, tomato and potato do not appear in them.

India Built 7,080 Magnet Jacks and 1,762 Corrector Magnets for the Large Hadron Collider, and CERN Set Its 2026 Contribution at 18.9 Million Swiss Francs

Indian laboratories supplied hardware for the collider's tunnel, built a photon detector for ALICE and appear on the author list of the Higgs paper. What the record shows, and what comes after the 2026 shutdown.

Har Gobind Khorana, the Son of a Punjab Village Tax Clerk, Helped Complete the Genetic Code, Built a 77-Base-Pair Gene in 1970 and Shared the 1968 Nobel Prize

A tax clerk's youngest son from Raipur synthesised all 64 RNA triplets, assembled a gene from short chemical pieces and, in 2007, gave his name to a research-internship programme for Indian students.

Reviews of 12 Ashwagandha Trials and 16 Turmeric Trials Report Lower Anxiety, Stress and Knee Pain Scores Than Placebo, While the Reviewers Rate the Certainty of the Ashwagandha Evidence Low and Its Sleep Evidence Moderate

Four herbs, their published trials and reviews, and a ministry letter. A plain reading of how many people each study enrolled, how long it ran, which scores were lower or better than on placebo, and what its authors say the data cannot show.

ISRO's Pushpak Space Plane Landed Itself Three Times on a Runway at Chitradurga After Helicopter Drops From 4.5 km, Flying the Same Winged Body Each Time

Three drops from an Air Force Chinook, one reused airframe, a harder release each time. ISRO's annual report records the orbital vehicle's design work and ground tests, and a landing gear test facility opened in April 2025.

Satyendra Nath Bose Wrote to Einstein on 4 June 1924, Einstein Translated His Paper and Submitted It by 2 July, and Bosons Carry His Name Though He Never Won a Nobel Prize

A British journal either turned the paper down or never answered, depending on whose account you read. Einstein had it in German within weeks, and the letters, the nominations and the later Nobel Prizes are laid out here.

Indian Babies Are Born Thin and Fat at the Same Time

Indians get type 2 diabetes younger, thinner and in greater numbers than almost anyone else. The trail runs back to the womb, though not nearly as far back as the internet version claims.

India Sold a $10,000 AIDS Drug for $350. A 1970 Law Made It Legal.

In 2001 the standard HIV drug combination cost $10,000 to $15,000 a year. An Indian company offered it for $350. That was not charity or luck. It was the result of a law passed in 1970 that said India would not patent medicines.

Birbal Sahni Was Elected to the Royal Society in 1936, Named a New Group of Fossil Plants from the Rajmahal Hills in 1948, and Founded the Lucknow Institute That Now Bears His Name

A boy who chased crabs down a Murree ravine and picked red snow off a Kashmir glacier became the scientist who read India's fossil plants, and the founder of the institute where that work goes on.

Vikram Sarabhai Founded a Cosmic-Ray Laboratory at 28, Then Began India's Space Programme in a Church at Thumba, Where the First Rocket Flew on 21 November 1963

A physicist from a mill-owning Ahmedabad family, a church used as a rocket office, and a short passage about not competing for the Moon. How one man's committee became ISRO, and what historians still dispute about him.

India Reached Mars for Less Than a Hollywood Movie

India got to Mars on its first attempt for about $74 million, less than the Hollywood film Gravity cost to make. The story of how ISRO does world-class space science on a shoestring.

We Can Now Hear Black Holes Collide, and We've Caught Hundreds

When two black holes collide, they shake spacetime itself. A decade ago we felt that shudder for the first time. Now catching them has become almost routine.

India Let Private Companies Into Space. Look What They Built.

For fifty years, 'space' in India meant ISRO and nothing else. Then the government opened the door to private companies, and startups started 3D-printing rocket engines and flying hyperspectral satellites.

Humans Just Flew to the Moon for the First Time in Over 50 Years

In April 2026, four astronauts left Earth orbit, looped around the far side of the Moon, and came home. It was the first crewed trip beyond low Earth orbit since 1972.

India's 4-Kilometre Gravitational-Wave Detector, Proposed in 2011, Broke Ground at Aundha in Hingoli on 23 April 2026

A third LIGO detector is being built in Maharashtra, more than 14 years after it was first proposed. What it will measure, what it costs and how its completion date has shifted.

Chandrayaan-3 Landed at 18:04 on 23 August 2023 for ₹615 Crore, and the 103 Metres Its Rover Drove Have Since Produced a Nature Paper

Two Indian instruments rode a 26 kg rover across the ground near 69 degrees south. Three years on, the papers from their readings still arrive, and the lander's NASA-built reflector is still being used as a marker.

The James Webb Space Telescope Launched on 25 December 2021, Released Its First Five Targets on 12 July 2022, and Has Since Confirmed a Galaxy 280 Million Years After the Big Bang

From a Christmas Day launch in Kourou to galaxies seen under 300 million years after the Big Bang, here is what Webb has published, and which readings of its data are still contested.

One Indian Company Sold 22 Percent of the World's Vaccine Doses in 2023, and Each Batch Starts With a Stored Seed and Ends With a Regulator's Release

Three Indian firms sold about 36 percent of the vaccine doses the world bought in 2023. This is the chain of cell banks, batch paperwork, government laboratory release and WHO inspection that stands behind each of those doses.

The Event Horizon Telescope Published the First Image of a Black Hole on 10 April 2019 and Our Galaxy's on 12 May 2022, Using Eight Radio Observatories Synchronised by Atomic Clocks

A lopsided ring of radio light, a courier network for hard drives and a 2025 result that surprised the team. What the Event Horizon Telescope has found since its first picture, and where India appears in the credits.

CV Raman Saw New Lines of Light in a Calcutta Laboratory on 28 February 1928, and Two Years Later Became the First Asian to Win a Science Nobel

A blue Mediterranean seen from a ship in 1921 led to six years of experiments in Calcutta, a student who shared the bench, and a Moscow team that saw the same lines a week earlier.

Meghnad Saha Sent His Ionisation Paper From Calcutta on 4 March 1920, Gave Astronomers a Temperature Scale for the Stars, and Was Nominated for the Nobel Prize Seven Times Without Winning

Two other men had written the equation down before he did, and he credited one of them in print. What he added was the data to use it on the Sun, and the Nobel committee's own report shows how it weighed that.

India's First Moon Mission Cost ₹386 Crore and Carried the NASA Instrument That Found Water on the Lunar Surface

Eleven instruments, six of them from abroad, went to the Moon on one Indian rocket. Eleven months after launch, a NASA spectrometer among them detected water and hydroxyl on the surface, in a search the discovery paper calls a 40-year quest.

Two Doctors Shared a BMI of 22.3, but One Carried 21 Percent Body Fat and the Other 9. A Pune Physician Has Spent Three Decades Tracing Why.

Yajnik argues colonial famines contributed to the Indian thin-fat build. A 2019 study of 11,000 years of skeletons finds the build is far older. The mother-to-child link is the part with the strongest evidence.

Aryabhata, India's First Satellite, Was Built in Bengaluru Sheds for About Rs 3 Crore and Launched on a Soviet Rocket on 19 April 1975

A 26-sided satellite assembled in industrial sheds, flown on another country's rocket, and silent in its experiments within days. What the records say about how Aryabhata happened, and where they disagree.

In 1963 M. S. Swaminathan Helped Put 100 Kilograms of Mexican Wheat Seed Into Indian Trial Plots. By 1967-68 India's Wheat Output Was 16.5 Million Tonnes, Up From 12.3

Ministry of Agriculture figures show a wheat crop of 10.40 million tonnes in 1965-66 and 16.54 million two harvests later. Here is who made the decisions, which numbers hold up, and what Punjab's groundwater figures show.

One Indian Rocket Put 104 Satellites Into Orbit on 15 February 2017, Nearly Triple the Old Record of 37

One rocket, 104 satellites, and a record that counted heads more than kilograms. Here is who flew, how ISRO released them in order, and where the number stands now.

Rakesh Sharma Flew 126 Orbits in April 1984, Ran 43 Experiment Sessions and Did Yoga in a Harness, and Became the First Indian in Space

The yoga was done strapped into a harness of elastic cords, and the man doing it later said a purist would have been disappointed. The rest of the flight plan, from cameras over India to a silver-germanium alloy, is in the Soviet record.