1) Osiris-Rex spacecraft (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer): NASA showed its first asteroid samples delivered last month by Osiris-Rex spacecraft.
- These samples are expected to offer clues to whether asteroids colliding with Earth billions of years ago brought water and other key ingredients for life.
- OSIRIS-Rex is the first U.S. mission to collect a sample from an asteroid.
- It collected sample from near-Earth asteroid Bennu.
- This mission will help scientists investigate how planets formed and how life began, as well as improve our understanding of asteroids that could impact Earth.
2) ‘One CGIAR’ Global Initiative: International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) joins One Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) global initiative.
- ICRISAT is an international research institute with a focus on tropical dryland agrifood system innovation.
- ICRISAT in India is one of CGIAR’s research centers.
- One CGIAR is a reformulation of CGIAR’s partnerships, and global presence, aiming for greater integration and impact in the face global challenges.
- CGIAR is a publicly-funded network of agrifood systems research centers, established in 1971.
- Aims: build a unified approach to transforming food, land, and water systems to address the challenges of the climate crisis.
- Project of Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), an international research program, is carried out under a consultative group on CGIAR headquartered in France.
3) Lakadong Turmeric: Padma Shri award winner Saioo is known as “Turmeric Trinity” because she made the Meghalaya Lakadong turmeric famous through her tireless work.
- Cultivated in the black alluvial soil during the monsoon months in Lakadong, Jaintia Hills.
- 3 times more potent than regular turmeric and has 7 to 12% of curcumin content.
- It was brought under the “One District One Product” scheme in West Jaintia Hills district.
- She has now planned to promote ‘Makhir’ ginger.
- Makhir is one of the two types of ginger popular in Meghalaya (other one being ‘Nadia’ ginger) having unique pungency and medicinal properties.
4) Baltic connector pipeline: A subsea gas pipeline and telecommunications cable connecting Finland and Estonia under the Baltic Sea have been damaged.
- Baltic connector pipeline connects Inkoo in Finland with Paldiski in Estonia, running across Gulf of Finland in the Baltic Sea.
- Baltic Sea is arm of the North Atlantic Ocean, extending northward from southern Denmark almost to the Arctic Circle.
- It separates the Scandinavian Peninsula from the rest of continental Europe.
