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Newspaper Terms Simplified for IAS Prelims

Part 7

1.  Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment

•  MOXIE produces oxygen from carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere by using solid oxide electrolysis.

•  It is present on NASA’s Mars 2020 Rover Perseverance.

•  Mars rover designed to explore the crater Jezero on Mars

2.  Sounding rocket

•  Sounding rockets are one or two stage solid propellant rockets used for probing the upper atmospheric regions and for space research.

•  They also serve as easily affordable platforms to test or prove prototypes of new components or subsystems intended for use in launch vehicles and satellites.

3.  Dark Sky Reserve

•  It is a public or private land with a distinguished nocturnal environment and starry nights that has been developed responsibly to prevent light pollution.

•  India’s 1st dark sky reserve will be set up at Hanle in Ladakh. It will come up within the Changthang Wildlife Sanctuary.

•  Aridity, limited vegetation, high elevation and large areas with sparse populations, all make it the perfect setting for long-term astronomical observatories and dark sky places.

4.  DART Mission

•  It is a NASA space mission that aims to test a method of planetary defense against Near-Earth objects (NEO).

•  It may one day save humanity from a potentially catastrophic collision by safely deflecting a deadly asteroid on its way to Earth

•  It could also fuel space mining technologies and kickstart the space economy in the coming decades.

5.  Rashid Rover

•  It is the 1 st mission (unmanned spacecraft) to Moon from the UAE, which will be launched from Kennedy Space Centre in Florida in 2024.

•  It is designed to study Moon's plasma and will attempt to explain why Moon dust is so sticky. 

•  It will also study the lunar surface, mobility on the Moon’s surface and how different surfaces interact with lunar particles.

6.  NAVIC

•  It is an independent stand-alone navigation satellite system developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). 

•  It consists of 7 satellites and covers the whole of India's landmass and up to 1,500 km from its boundaries. 

•  This system was earlier known as IRNSS (Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System). 

•  Application: o Presently, it is being used in public vehicle tracking in India, for providing emergency warning alerts to fishermen venturing into the deep sea and for tracking and providing information related to natural disasters. 

•  Presently, there are 4 navigation satellite systems operational in the world viz., GPS from the U.S., GLONASS from Russia, Galileo from European Union and BeiDou from China. 

•  In addition, there are 2 regional systems viz., NavIC from India and QZSS from Japan.