Daily Current Affairs Notes for 04 October 2022

Mars Orbiter Mission: Mangalyaan, the Indian Mars Orbiter Craft runs out of fuel and battery after completing 8 years. Mangalyaan was a huge achievement for the Indian Space Research Organization.

Overview

Mars Orbiter Mission: Mangalyaan, the Indian Mars Orbiter Craft runs out of fuel and battery after completing 8 years. Mangalyaan was a huge achievement for the Indian Space Research Organization. It helped to study the Martian landscape including surface geology, morphology, atmospheric processes, surface temperature, and atmospheric escape process.

• Mangalyaan used five major instruments to study geology and morphology. These five instruments included Mars Color Camera (MCC), Thermal Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (TIS), Methane Sensor for Mars (MSM), Mars Exospheric Neutral Competition Analyser (MENCA), and Lyman Alpha Photometer (LAP).

Mars Orbiter Mission: About

• The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) is also known as Mangalyaan. It was a space probe orbiting Mars on 24th September 2014. The Indian Space Research Organization launched the MOM on 5th November 2013. It is India’s first interplanetary mission and the fourth space agency to achieve Mars orbit. India became the first Asian nation to reach Martian orbit and the first nation in the world to reach Mars on a Maiden attempt.
• The Mars Orbiter Mission probe was launched from the first launch pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Andhra Pradesh using Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rocket C25 at 9:08 UTC on 5th November 2013. The launch window was approximately 20 days long and started on 28th October 2013.

The Nobel Prizes 2022 for medicine or physiology was awarded to Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo.

The Nobel Prizes 2022 for Medicine:

• The Nobel Prizes 2022 for medicine or physiology was awarded to Swedish geneticist Svante Pääbo. Svante Pääbo was given the award “for his discoveries concerning the genomes of extinct hominins and human evolution,” the Nobel Prize committee. Considered the most prestigious prize in the scientific world, it is awarded by the Nobel Assembly of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute and is worth 10 million Swedish crowns ($900,357).

Nobel Prizes 2022: About his  research:

• Through his pioneering research, Svante Pääbo accomplished something seemingly impossible: sequencing the genome of the Neanderthal, an extinct relative of present-day humans. He also made the sensational discovery of a previously unknown hominin, Denisova. Importantly, Pääbo also found that gene transfer had occurred from these now extinct hominins to Homo sapiens following the migration out of Africa around 70,000 years ago. This ancient flow of genes to present-day humans has physiological relevance today, for example affecting how our immune system reacts to infections.

About the Svante Pääbo:

• Svante Pääbo (born 20 April 1955) is a Swedish geneticist specialising in the field of evolutionary genetics and a Nobel prize laureate. As one of the founders of paleogenetics, he has worked extensively on the Neanderthal genome. He was appointed director of the Department of Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany in 1997. He is also a professor at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan.

Pegatron third iPhone manufacturer in India: With the opening of a factory in Mahindra World City in Chennai, Pegatron became third Apple supplier to establish a production facility in India.

Overview

Pegatron third iPhone manufacturer in India: With the opening of a factory in Mahindra World City in Chennai, Taiwan’s Pegatron became the third Apple supplier to establish a production facility in India. It will put about Rs 1,100 crore into the facility, which might lead to the creation of 14,000 employment. The other two Apple suppliers with facilities in India are the Taiwanese companies Foxconn and Wistron.

Pegatron third iPhone manufacturer in India: Key Points

• The opening of Pegatron’s factory coincides with Apple’s anticipated relocation of at least a quarter of its manufacturing operations to India by 2025.
• In February of last year, it and the Tamil Nadu government inked an agreement known as an MoU.
• The production-linked incentive programme of the central government received an application from the electronics firm.
• Hosur, Coimbatore, and Sriperumbudur will be transformed into centres for the production of electronics by Tamil Nadu.
• 20% of the nation’s electronics are produced with help from the state. Among the state’s main investments are Samsung, Foxconn, Tata Electronics, and Dell. Stalin claimed that the government was improving the supply chain.

iPhone manufacturing in India:

• Stalin reaffirmed the plan put forward by the government to reach the goal of a $1 trillion economy. The state is providing particular incentives for the industrial sector in order to progress in that direction. He said, “We are making efforts to increase employment and support diversification initiatives in every area. Apple began assembling iPhone locally in 2017 and produced the majority of its older phone models in India.
• According to a JP Morgan study, Apple is planning to produce 25% of its phones in India by 2025 and to relocate 5% of the world’s iPhone 14 production to India by the end of 2022 in an effort to diversify its China-focused manufacturing.

Elon Musk unveils Optimus robot's prototype: Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, unveiled a model of the humanoid "Optimus" robot, which uses some of the same AI system as in Tesla vehicles.

Overview

Elon Musk unveils Optimus robot’s prototype: Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, unveiled a model of the humanoid “Optimus” robot, which uses some of the same Artificial Intelligence (AI) software and sensors as the Autopilot driving assistance system in Tesla vehicles. At Tesla AI Day 2022, which was held to show off how far the company’s research into autonomous robots and vehicles had progressed, Optimus was unveiled.

Elon Musk unveils Optimus robot’s prototype: Key Points

• Optimus was initially seen during the event pacing around the stage, along with updates on new self-driving software and a first look at the Dojo hardware that powers Tesla’s AI research, according to media sources.
• Elon Musk claims that this humanoid prototype is capable of more than what was demonstrated in real life.
• But at the Tesla AI Day celebration, it was used for the first time without a tether.
• Musk also asserted that Tesla’s Optimus is different from previous really stunning humanoid robot demos since it is designed for mass manufacturing in the “millions” of units and is extremely competent.

Sujoy Lal Thaosen and Anish Dayal Singh have been appointed as the new director generals of the CRPF and ITBP respectively.

Overview 

Senior Indian Police Service (IPS) officers Sujoy Lal Thaosen and Anish Dayal Singh have been appointed as the new director generals of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) respectively. Thaosen’s scheduled retirement is in November this year, while Singh will superannuate in December 2024. The order for their appointment was issued by the Personnel Ministry after sanction from the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) headed by the prime minister.

Highlights:

• Thaosen, a 1988-batch officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre, is currently working as the director general (DG) of the border guarding force Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) and holding the additional charge of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police. The Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) DG post fell vacant on Friday after IPS officer Kuldiep Singh (1986-batch) retired.
• Anish Dayal Singh, a 1988-batch officer (Manipur cadre), is currently serving as a special director in the Intelligence Bureau.