UPSC Current Affairs 25 June 2026

• Beyond Prestige: Space technology is no longer viewed just for national prestige, but as a critical economic pillar supporting telecommunications, navigation, agriculture, and healthcare.
• Unified Market Potential: The BRICS bloc represents a massive share of the world’s population, GDP, and scientific capacity, positioning it to dominate global commercial space services.

• Virtual Constellation: The RSSC functions as a shared data mechanism, pooling existing satellites like India's Resourcesat, China’s Gaofen, and Russia's Kanopus.
• Expanded Footprint: A primary focus of the 2026 meeting was integrating the newer BRICS members into this data-sharing network.
• Real-World Uses: The pooled data is explicitly used for Global South challenges like climate change, disaster management, resource mapping, and food security.

• Institutional Structure: Ongoing discussions advanced the formation of a formal BRICS Space Council.
• The Objective: It will serve as a permanent, standing coordinating body to oversee terms of reference, align space policies, and govern future joint exploration missions.

• Orbital Congestion: With skyrocketing satellite launches crowding Earth's orbits, space junk was a central policy debate.
• Debris-Free Operations: Member states emphasized executing strictly responsible, debris-free missions, maintaining outer space transparency, and preserving it as a safe global common.

• Founding Members: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
• Expanded Members: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Indonesia.

• Official Nomenclature: Designated by Russia as the 9M730 Burevestnik (Storm Petrel) and classified by NATO under the codename SSC-X-9 Skyfall.
• Propulsion Mechanism: Utilises a small solid-fuel rocket booster for launch before engaging a unique, miniature liquid-sodium cooled nuclear reactor engine for sustained cruise flight.
• Virtually Unlimited Range: Because it depends entirely on a miniature nuclear power source rather than limited liquid fuel, its potential operational range is considered globally infinite.
• Subsonic Flight Speed: Travels at slow, conventional aircraft speeds ranging between 850 km/h and 1,300 km/h (roughly Mach 0.75).
• Ultra-Low Altitude Path: Flies exceptionally low to the ground at an altitude of just 25 to 100 metres, using natural terrain masking to stay beneath conventional air-defence radar horizons.
• Payload Capacity: Engineered specifically to carry a substantial 400-kilogram nuclear warhead with an explosive force yield approaching 500 kilotons.

• Bypassing Defence Shields: Its ability to circle the globe for days and strike targets from completely unpredictable directions allows it to effectively bypass static early-warning radars and missile shields.
• A Second-Strike Weapon: Russian military doctrine frames the Burevestnik as a retaliatory weapon intended to wipe out remaining enemy command infrastructure after an initial nuclear exchange.
• Detection Vulnerability: Despite its low altitude, critics note that its slow speed and the radioactive heat signature left in its wake may actually make it easier for modern Western sensors to intercept.
• Fatal Developmental History: The program has been plagued by dangers, including a major 2019 explosion during a seabed recovery operation in the White Sea that killed five top nuclear scientists.
• Geopolitical Posturing: The finalisation of this project is widely viewed by geopolitical experts as a psychological tactic to deter Western intervention in ongoing European conflicts.

• Nature of Organisation: An autonomous body established in 1999 under the administrative control of the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES).
• Headquarters: Located in Hyderabad, Telangana.
• Core Mandate: To provide the best possible ocean data, information, and advisory services to the public, industries, government agencies, and scientists.
• Global Recognition: Serves as an official Tsunami Service Provider (TSP) for the UNESCO-IOC Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System (IOTWMS).

• Potential Fishing Zone (PFZ): Provides daily advisories to fishermen regarding high-probability fishing zones to maximize catch and save fuel.
• Indian Tsunami Early Warning Centre (ITEWC): Delivers fast tsunami alerts and storm surge advisories to India and 28 Indian Ocean Rim countries.
• Ocean State Forecast (OSF): Predicts wave heights, sea surface temperatures, wind speeds, and ocean currents 5 to 7 days in advance.
• Search and Rescue Aided Tool (SARAT): Assists the Indian Navy, Coast Guard, and maritime police in tracking missing objects or persons at sea.
• Algal Bloom Information Service (ABIS): Tracks and provides real-time maps of harmful phytoplankton blooms harmful to marine ecology.
• SAMUDRA 2.0 Mobile App: A multilingual digital application that broadcasts real-time warnings directly to coastal communities.

• Full Form: Bharat's Hub for Agritech, Resilience, Advancement and Incubation for Export Innovation.
• Nodal Agency: Spearheaded by the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), a statutory body under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
• Core Objective: To empower and scale 100 selected agri-food and agri-tech startups by fostering an export-oriented mindset.
• Primary Target: Directly supports India's ambitious vision to achieve USD 50 billion in agri-food exports for APEDA-scheduled products by 2030.

• Acceleration Model: Features a rigorous 3-month acceleration programme focusing on product development, international compliance, and global market access.
• High-Value Segments: Focuses strictly on high-potential product categories like GI-tagged goods, organic produce, superfoods, AYUSH items, and livestock products.
• Tech-Driven Solutions: Prioritises startups leveraging advanced tech like AI-based quality control, blockchain traceability, IoT-enabled cold chains, and agri-fintech.
• Ecosystem Integration: Complements existing government incubation efforts by bridging the gap between local production and international food safety standards.

• Overcoming Barriers: Directly addresses critical export bottlenecks like food perishability, logistics inefficiencies, and strict packaging regulations.
• Global Competitiveness: Establishes direct B2B engagements, connecting young Indian entrepreneurs with global buyers and international trade stakeholders.
• Backward Integration: Drives demand-driven integration back to local Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs), improving the earnings of grassroots farmers.

• Name Meaning: The name Antaram is derived from a Sanskrit word meaning "difference" or "variance", signifying its stark distinctiveness from other moths.
• Scientific Family: It belongs to the family Erebidae and falls under the tiger moth subfamily Arctiinae.
• Distinct Features: Experts isolated Antaram idukki from related moth groups based on a highly peculiar pattern of strongly waved bands (fasciae) on its forewings alongside unique external and genital structures.

• Endemic Location: Currently, this moth is known exclusively to the Idukki district of Kerala.
• Geography: It thrives in the lush, humid montane forest ecosystems characteristic of the southern Western Ghats.

• Crucial Pollinators: Tiger moths like Antaram idukki are key ecological players, particularly as nocturnal pollinators for wild plants that bloom only at night.
• Food Chain Core: They function as a vital source of nutrition for regional wildlife populations, including local birds, bats, and small predatory mammals.
• Bio-indicators: Because moths are highly sensitive to microscopic changes in their surroundings, they serve as excellent biological indicators for structural environmental change and forest health.

• Biology Unknown: Because the species is exceptionally rare and has just been documented, scientists note that its lifecycles, feeding behaviors, and specific larval host plants remain completely unknown.
• Habitat Vulnerability: Researchers have issued warnings that continuous habitat degradation, climate shifts, and native vegetation changes in the Western Ghats may threaten the moth with extinction before its role in the ecosystem can be fully mapped.

• Data collected by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the ALMA radio telescope array revealed that this cosmic time capsule formed during the universe's "cosmic noon"—long before our own Sun and Solar System existed.

• Meaning of Name: The "3I" indicates it is the third confirmed Interstellar Object ever discovered passing through our solar system, following 1I/ʻOumuamua (2017) and 2I/Borisov (2019).
• Discovery Date: It was first detected on July 1, 2025.
• The Discoverer: It was spotted by the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) survey station located in Rio Hurtado, Chile.
• Scientific Designation: Officially catalogued by astronomers as C/2025 N1 (ATLAS).

• Hyperbolic Path: Unlike local comets, it travels on an unbound, hyperbolic trajectory, proving it is a temporary visitor that will eventually leave our solar system permanently.
• Record Velocity: It sped through the inner solar system at roughly 2,50,000 km/h (over 60 km/s), marking one of the highest speeds ever recorded for a solar system visitor.
• Earth Proximity: It posed no threat to Earth, making its closest approach on December 19, 2025, at a safe distance of 1.8 Astronomical Units (approx. 270 million kilometers).
• Mars Flyby: It passed within 29 million kilometers of Mars in October 2025, where it was photographed as a fuzzy white coma by NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover.
• Future Departure: The comet is currently passing the orbit of Saturn; it will exit Pluto's boundary by 2029 and leave our solar system entirely around 2035.

• Core Size: The comet's icy heart (nucleus) is relatively small, measured at just over 700 metres in diameter.
• Frigid Birthplace: The massive abundance of heavy water ice indicates it spent its formative years in a deeply frozen, dense star-forming cloud that was vastly colder than our own pre-solar nebula.
• Volatile Outgassing: When warmed by the Sun, it experienced dramatic "cryovolcanic" activity, creating a 40-fold surge in water and methane emissions, blasting out powerful chemical jets.
• Wobbling Behaviour: Observations of its sunward jets revealed a precession (wobble), allowing astronomers to calculate that the comet nucleus rotates once every 15.5 hours.
• Chameleon Colour Change: As it emerged from behind the Sun, its outer dust crust shed to expose pristine volatile ice, causing its visible colour to shift dramatically from red to a vibrant green and blue hue.

• Cellular Malignancy: It originates when cells within the inner mucosal layer of the stomach undergo DNA mutations, causing rapid, out-of-control tumour growth.
• Adenocarcinoma Dominance: Approximately 90% to 95% of all stomach cancers are categorized as adenocarcinomas, starting inside the glandular tissue lining.
• Anatomical Shifts: In Western nations, cases are increasingly appearing in the upper stomach near the esophagus, whereas lower-stomach cancers remain tightly linked to chronic bacterial infections.

• Helicobacter pylori Infection: Chronic infection by this specific bacterium is the single strongest risk factor, systematically damaging internal tissue walls.
• Dietary Carcinogens: High intake of foods preserved via heavy salting, pickling, or smoking drastically increases vulnerability.
• Lifestyle Habits: Heavy tobacco smoking and excessive alcohol use significantly accelerate cell mutation rates.
• Chronic Acid Reflux: Long-standing Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD) continuously irritates the upper gastric lining.

• Early Signs (Vague & Subtle):
  • Persistent, unexplained indigestion or mild heartburn.
  • Frequent feeling of fullness even after eating small portions of food.
  • Subtle, continuous upper abdominal discomfort.
• Advanced Signs (Severe):
  • Rapid, unintended weight loss without dietary changes.
  • Chronic nausea, vomiting, or vomiting blood.
  • Difficulty swallowing or severe fatigue brought on by anemia.
  • Dark, tarry, or bloody stools indicating internal bleeding.

• Upper Endoscopy: The primary tool where a flexible tube with a camera evaluates the stomach interior and harvests immediate cell biopsies.
• Advanced Imaging: CT scans, PET scans, and endoscopic ultrasounds are deployed to map exactly how deep a tumour has grown.
• Targeted Biomarker Profiling: Extracted tumour cells are tested for specific genetic expressions like HER2 or MSI to construct tailored treatment plans.

• Perioperative Chemotherapy: Powerful drug regimens are administered before surgical intervention to successfully shrink tumours and elevate survival metrics.
• Surgical Gastrectomy: Minimally invasive methods, including advanced robotic and laparoscopic surgeries, are utilized to safely remove partial or total segments of the stomach.
• Targeted and Immunotherapies: Landmark drug integrations (such as immune checkpoint inhibitors) are actively helping patients fight advanced-stage diseases by training the immune system to hunt cancer cells.

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