Missions, technologies and regulatory bodies behind the S&T headlines. 73 concepts, each with its definition, key details and a timeline of every news story that touched it.
The Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007 (PSS Act) is the main law that controls how money moves electronically in India. It covers systems like UPI...
Anti-submarine warfare, or ASW, is the set of methods, ships, aircraft and weapons a navy uses to find, track and destroy enemy submarines. A submarine is...
A medical device is any instrument, machine, implant or material used to find, prevent, watch or treat a disease or injury, where it works mainly in a...
The Anti-Submarine Warfare Shallow Water Craft (ASW-SWC) programme is the Indian Navy's project to build 16 small warships that hunt submarines close to the...
Asymmetric catalysis is a way of making mostly one enantiomer (one 'hand') of a chiral molecule instead of a 50:50 mixture. It uses a small amount of a...
Chirality is the property of an object that cannot be placed exactly on top of its mirror image. Your two hands are the best example: they are mirror...
The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 is India's first full law to protect people's personal data in digital form. Personal data means any...
A small modular reactor, or SMR, is a nuclear reactor that is much smaller than a normal nuclear power plant. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)...
The Defence Acquisition Procedure, or DAP, is the Ministry of Defence's rulebook for buying weapons, aircraft, ships and other big equipment for the Army...
6G is the sixth generation of mobile network technology, the system that will come after today's 5G. It is expected to be much faster than 5G, respond...
The Bharat 6G Vision is India's official plan to design, develop and deploy 6G technology, released in March 2023. Its goal is for India to become a leading...
Human Papillomavirus (HPV) is a very common virus that spreads through close skin-to-skin and sexual contact. Most people get it at some point in life, and...
The Universal Immunisation Programme (UIP) is the Government of India's free vaccination programme for children and pregnant women. Through it, every...
WHO prequalification is a quality check run by the World Health Organization on vaccines, medicines, diagnostic tests and some medical devices. When a...
The Tejas is a small, light fighter jet designed and built in India. It has one engine and a triangle-shaped 'delta' wing, and it can fight other aircraft...
The Kaveri is a jet engine that India started developing on its own in 1989 to power the Tejas fighter. It is being developed by the Gas Turbine Research...
A Rare Earth Permanent Magnet (REPM) is a very strong magnet made using rare earth metals, mainly neodymium. A 'permanent' magnet keeps its magnetism on its...
A fleet support ship is a large naval ship that works like a moving petrol pump and supply store for warships. It carries fuel, fresh water, food...
The National Quantum Mission (NQM) is the Government of India's eight-year programme to build quantum technologies in India. These are machines that use the...
Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) means new methods of locking digital data that even a powerful future quantum computer cannot break. Unlike QKD, PQC does...
India's Gaganyaan programme aims to demonstrate indigenous human spaceflight capability by sending a crew to an orbit of 400 km altitude for seven days....
The Artemis programme is NASA's multi-mission initiative to return humans to the Moon and eventually send humans to Mars. It is named after Artemis, the...
The Space Launch System (SLS) is NASA's super heavy-lift expendable launch vehicle — the most powerful rocket ever built, generating 8.8 million pounds of...
CERT-In, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, is India's national agency for handling cyber security incidents such as hacking, data breaches and...
The Indian Space Policy 2023 was released in April 2023 and represents the most comprehensive overhaul of India's space governance since the founding of...
India's private space sector was opened up following key reforms in 2020, including the establishment of IN-SPACe (Indian National Space Promotion and...
The Multi-Role Fighter Aircraft (MRFA) programme is the Indian Air Force's plan to buy 114 modern fighter jets of the 'medium' class. A multi-role fighter...
Agentic AI means AI systems that do not just answer questions but act on their own to finish a task. You give such a system a goal, and it plans the steps...
Gross Expenditure on Research and Development, or GERD, is the total money a country spends on research and development (R&D) inside its borders in one...
An integrated theatre command puts units of the Army, Navy and Air Force under one commander, who is responsible for all military operations in one...
Operation Sindoor was India's military operation against terror camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (PoJK) in May 2025. It began in...
An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), commonly called a drone, is an aircraft that flies without a pilot sitting inside it. It is either flown by a person from...
India's defence indigenisation policy is anchored in the goal of reducing import dependence (currently ~60% of defence equipment is imported) and building a...
Operation Sindoor was India's military response following a terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, on 22 April 2025, which killed civilians.
GLP-1 (Glucagon-Like Peptide-1) receptor agonists are a class of medicines that mimic the action of the naturally occurring GLP-1 hormone, which is released...
ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) operates under the Department of Space (DOS), which functions directly under the Prime Minister's Office. The...
Military drones (UAVs — Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) were initially developed primarily for intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance...
Project 17A is the Indian Navy's follow-on programme to Project 17 (Shivalik class), producing seven stealth guided-missile frigates with reduced radar...
The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), established in 1958 under the Department of Defence Research and Development in the Ministry of...
Kavach (earlier called the Train Collision Avoidance System, TCAS) is an indigenously developed Automatic Train Protection system, developed by the Research...
Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC), formerly IRNSS (Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System), is India's autonomous satellite-based navigation...
Nipah virus (NiV), a paramyxovirus in the genus Henipavirus, was first identified during a 1998–99 outbreak in Malaysia (Sungai Nipah village), where 265...
India's space exploration ambitions run parallel to the global lunar renaissance. ISRO's Chandrayaan-3 (August 2023) achieved a soft landing near the Moon's...
A loitering munition (also called a 'kamikaze drone' or 'suicide drone') is an unmanned aerial system that can autonomously or semi-autonomously loiter over...
The Anusandhan National Research Foundation, or ANRF, is India's top body for funding and guiding scientific research. It was created by a law of Parliament...
A free-return trajectory is a carefully calculated spaceflight path that uses the gravitational fields of Earth and the Moon to loop a spacecraft around the...
Lunar regolith is the layer of loose, fragmented material covering the Moon's surface, formed over billions of years by meteorite impacts, solar wind...
NavIC (Navigation with Indian Constellation), formerly known as IRNSS (Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System), is India's own satellite-based...
Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) refers to orbits with altitudes roughly between 160 km and 2,000 km above Earth, characterised by short orbital periods (about 90...
The Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) is the centrepiece of NASA's crewed lunar architecture. Unlike the Apollo Command Module, Orion is designed for...
The Boeing P-8I is a specialised maritime patrol aircraft operated by the Indian Navy, designated the 'Poseidon' in its base US Navy variant and 'P-8I' for...
The Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana (PMBJP) is a centrally funded scheme under the Department of Pharmaceuticals (Ministry of Chemicals and...
Sovereign AI refers to a nation's ability to develop, deploy, and control artificial intelligence systems using its own data, computing infrastructure, and...
Aditya-L1 is the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) first dedicated mission to study the Sun, launched to observe the solar corona, chromosphere...
ADA was established in 1984 under the Ministry of Defence to oversee India's Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) programme. It is an autonomous body affiliated with...
The Atomic Energy Act, 1962 is the foundational legislation governing all nuclear activities in India. It vests ownership of all atomic minerals and fissile...
BEL is a Navratna Defence Public Sector Undertaking (DPSU) under the Ministry of Defence, established in 1954 in Bengaluru. It is India's premier defence...
Customs duty in India is levied under the Customs Act, 1962 and the Customs Tariff Act, 1975, administered by the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and...
A deepfake is AI-generated synthetic media — video, audio, or images — that realistically replicates a real person's appearance, voice, or behavior using...
The Defence Acquisition Council is the apex decision-making body of the Ministry of Defence for capital acquisitions for the Army, Navy, Air Force, and...