Science & Technology

11.1 Space and Aerospace

Red Balloon Aerospace, a Vijayawada-based space startup founded in May 2025 by two former Skyroot Aerospace executives, launched "VISTA," India's first indigenous stratospheric super-pressure balloon, from Indira Gandhi Stadium, Vijayawada, under Mission SANA, reaching an altitude of roughly 25 kilometres. The achievement makes India only the fifth country — after the United States, France, Japan and China — with indigenous stratospheric-balloon capability.

Tata Advanced Systems Limited and Airbus SE completed the first test flight of an India-manufactured Airbus C295 military transport aircraft from the Final Assembly Line at Vadodara, Gujarat — India's first large-scale private-sector military-aircraft manufacturing programme, executed under a ₹21,935 crore Ministry of Defence contract for 56 C295 aircraft for the Indian Air Force.

ISRO and the Department of Atomic Energy are jointly developing an advanced artificial heating system to extend the operational life of lunar landers from roughly 14 Earth days (one lunar day) to as much as 200 days, helping spacecraft survive lunar-night temperatures that plunge below -129°C to -180°C.

The 5th Indian Space Congress, held in New Delhi (15–17 June), saw the launch of the "Indian Space Industry E-Catalogue," India's first digital repository of space-sector capabilities — a database built by the Satcom Industry Association (SIA-India) covering over 200 verified space and defence companies across nearly 20 domains and 120-plus sub-domains.

T-Hub's ORBIT Space-Tech Accelerator, an Atal Innovation Mission-supported programme, launched its third cohort, inducting 13 more space-tech startups — including Sanyak Space Technologies, Trishul Space, Kessler Dynamics, Velotrax, Zoove Space, Space OS, Humanity Space, Landlens, STAR Labs, Red Balloon Aerospace, Astro Voltaics, Orbit Grid and Nibiaa Devices — taking the total startups supported through ORBIT to 36. IN-SPACe, ISRO's commercial arm, separately funded its first three startups under its Technology Adoption Fund: Astrobase Space Technologies, SataSure Analytics India, and TM2SPACE Technologies.

Internationally, NASA officially ended the MAVEN Mars orbiter mission, after losing contact with the spacecraft on 6 December 2025 and concluding, after nearly six months of radio silence, that it could not be recovered. MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) launched in November 2013 and entered Martian orbit in September 2014, studying how Mars transformed from a warm, wet planet into today's cold, dry world. NASA is separately preparing a "Swift Boost" mission to raise the orbit of the ageing Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which is losing altitude to atmospheric drag from heightened solar activity and could otherwise re-enter the atmosphere by late 2026. NASA also announced its reworked Artemis III crew — Commander Randy Bresnik, Mission Specialists Andre Douglas (his first spaceflight) and Frank Rubio (holder of the US record for longest continuous ISS stay, 371 days), and ESA's Luca Parmitano as pilot, who becomes the first ESA astronaut — and only the second non-American — on an Artemis mission; the mission itself has been reworked into a two-week Low-Earth-Orbit demonstration rather than a lunar flyby, testing docking mechanisms and operational readiness for future crewed landings. Separately, the US activated SOLAR-1, its first satellite dedicated exclusively to continuous operational space-weather monitoring (run by NOAA, launched September 2025, formerly named SWFO-L1), providing faster warning of solar storms that can disrupt GPS, communications and power grids.

A study published in the journal Icarus, using 122 simulations of Solar System evolution, examined Uranus's moons and rings for evidence that additional giant planets once existed in the early Solar System before being ejected into interstellar space.

11.2 Artificial Intelligence and Digital Governance

Microsoft unveiled "Majorana 2," its second-generation topological quantum-computing chip, at Microsoft Build 2026, developed with support from Microsoft Discovery (its agentic AI platform), succeeding 2025's Majorana 1 and targeting commercially useful quantum computing by 2029.

India's IndiaAI Mission backed the launch of "Varya," developed by Avataar.ai and unveiled in New Delhi in the presence of MeitY Secretary S. Krishnan — described as India's first indigenous distilled video story-generation model, using a compression technique in which a compact "student" model learns to replicate a larger "teacher" model's outputs, delivering similar capability with far lower computational cost.

BHASHINI, functioning under the Digital India Corporation, launched the VYOMA Innovation Challenge, promoting open-source, multilingual, voice-first AI solutions that work in offline or low-connectivity environments, in partnership with Current AI and Kalpa Impact. The challenge centres on "Sunno Sutra," a multilingual, voice-first, open-source handheld AI reference device jointly built by BHASHINI and Current AI, unveiled at the IndiaAI Impact Summit 2026.

MeitY's National e-Governance Division empanelled six technology firms — Tata Consultancy Services, NEC Corporation India, Kyndryl Solutions, Innefu Labs, CoRover, and Cactus Communications — selected from a pool of more than 80 applicants, to build and deploy AI, machine-learning and data-science solutions across government departments.

India joined Project Glasswing, a global cybersecurity initiative led by Anthropic PBC, aimed at strengthening the cyber resilience of critical digital infrastructure among participating countries; through the initiative, India gains access to an AI model designed to analyse large software codebases and identify vulnerabilities, functioning as an AI-powered security auditor.

11.3 Institutional and Research Milestones

Union Minister Dr. Jitendra Singh launched the ₹200-crore ANRF–Ministry of Jal Shakti MAHA Water Mission to fund water-sector startups, part of the Anusandhan National Research Foundation's broader MAHA (Missions for Advancement in High-Impact Areas) push, which also covers electric vehicles, drones, medical technologies and 6G — explicitly framed as an effort to "democratise" research funding beyond a handful of elite institutions. He separately launched a new ANRF portal offering patent-filing and research-writing support for researchers, students and innovators.

At the 150th anniversary celebrations of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science (IACS), Kolkata — the birthplace of the Raman Effect, discovered by Sir C. V. Raman on 28 February 1928 — Dr. Jitendra Singh inaugurated an indigenously developed Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) system, built for fabricating India's first amorphous silicon solar cell, and RETINA (Research Entrepreneurship for Translation, Innovation and NAvigation), a hub connecting fundamental research to entrepreneurship and startups. IACS counts Jagadish Chandra Bose, Meghnad Saha, Satyendra Nath Bose and C. V. Raman among its historic scientists.

IIT Kanpur became host to India's first DORIS (Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite) ground beacon, joining a global network of French-operated, high-precision geodetic tracking stations that determine satellite position and velocity using the Doppler effect.

IIT Madras inaugurated an advanced Circulating Water Tunnel Facility at Thaiyur, near Chennai, funded with ₹4.5 crore in CSR support from Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders, to strengthen indigenous ship-design and hydrodynamic-testing capability; it separately released ANCHOR (Atlas of Neurochemical Characterization of the Human Brainstem with 3D Reconstruction), built by the Sudha Gopalakrishnan Brain Centre and described as the world's most detailed 3D atlas of the human brainstem, spanning brain development from the prenatal period through childhood and adulthood.

Hindustan Unilever Limited inaugurated the Unilever Fragrance Hub at IIT Bombay, its third global fragrance R&D hub (after the UK and USA), built with roughly ₹95 crore of investment as part of a broader EUR 100 million global fragrance-innovation programme.

Osmania University, Hyderabad, became the first Indian university to hold four ISO management-system certifications simultaneously: ISO 21001:2018 (Educational Organisations Management), ISO 14001:2015 (Environmental Management), ISO 50001:2018 (Energy Management) and ISO 22000:2018 (Food Safety Management), certified by the Bureau of Indian Standards.

CSIR organised a Technology Transfer and Bharatiya Nirdeshak Document release event, transferring 7 technologies to industry, releasing 10 Bharatiya Nirdeshak Dravyas (8 phytochemical, 1 precious-metal, 1 propane-gas reference standards) and handing critical quantum-sensing components to DRDO. Separately, the CSIR-National Institute of Science Communication and Policy Research ran a three-day training on Koha, the widely used open-source library-automation software.

11.4 Health, Agriculture and Materials Research

Teplizumab (Tzield), an immunotherapy drug manufactured by Sanofi, became the first medicine designed to delay the onset of symptomatic Stage 3 Type 1 diabetes, following final draft guidance from the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (22 June) for use under the NHS in England and Wales, for patients aged 8 and above. (Type 1 diabetes progresses through recognised stages: Stage 2 involves autoantibodies and abnormal blood sugar without needing insulin, while Stage 3 is the symptomatic stage requiring lifelong insulin therapy.)

ICAR-Indian Institute of Oilseeds Research, Hyderabad, patented a biopolymer-based "Smart Seed Coating" technology capable of lifting crop yields by up to 37%, replacing single-purpose seed treatments with a multifunctional protective shield that improves germination and resilience to biotic and abiotic stress.

Researchers at the Central University of Rajasthan developed a low-cost, reagent-free sensor for detecting trace lead contamination in drinking water, aimed at simple on-site water-quality monitoring, particularly in resource-constrained settings.

Scientists at INST Mohali (an autonomous institute under the Department of Science and Technology) developed a new electrolyte additive — 1,3-bis(1,3-dicarboxypropyl)-1H-imidazole-3-ium chloride (BDIM) — that improves the safety, lifespan and affordability of aqueous zinc-ion batteries, positioning them as a lower-cost, safer alternative to lithium-ion batteries for large-scale energy storage.

The GRAPES-3 high-energy cosmic-ray observatory in Ooty, Tamil Nadu (operated by the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research), was used to study how atmospheric temperature and solar magnetic-field variation affect muons generated by cosmic-ray interactions in the atmosphere, working in the TeV-to-PeV energy range.

Kisan Sarathi, India's largest integrated digital agro-advisory platform (launched July 2021, a joint MeitY–Ministry of Agriculture initiative implemented through IASRI and the Digital India Corporation), continued expanding its multilingual, personalised farmer-advisory reach through its Interactive Information Dissemination System.

11.5 Industry and Innovation Announcements

Tata Consultancy Services signed a multi-million-dollar agreement with Sweden's SKF to implement a next-generation AI-powered ERP platform across SKF's global operations. Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone secured a 10-year, USD 70 million marine-services contract for Argentina's first LNG export project, marking Adani's entry into South American infrastructure, executed through a 51:49 joint venture between Adani Harbour International FZCO and Argentina's Meridian Group.

At the Petersburg International Economic Forum, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed supplying and co-producing the Sukhoi Su-57 stealth fighter in India, including full technology transfer — an offer that revives the long-dormant Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft programme the two countries first launched in 2007.

The Indian Chamber of Commerce, one of India's oldest chambers (established 1925 by Ghanshyam Das Birla), briefed Union Minister Jitendra Singh on plans to facilitate ₹1 lakh crore of investment in West Bengal through its member companies.

At the RISE Conclave 2026 in Bengaluru, Dr. Jitendra Singh noted that India's startup ecosystem has grown from 350 startups to roughly 2.3 lakh, generating an estimated 24–25 lakh jobs over the past decade, and that CSIR now hosts more than 800 technologies on its public Technology Showcase Portal for industry access.

Chapter 11 Quiz

1. Which Indian startup launched the country's first indigenous stratospheric super-pressure balloon, and which country ranking does this give India? — Red Balloon Aerospace; India becomes the 5th country with this capability
2. What is the value of the MoD contract under which India's first domestically built C295 aircraft flew? — ₹21,935 crore, for 56 aircraft
3. How long can ISRO/DAE's new lunar-lander heating tech extend operational life, from what baseline? — Up to 200 days, from a baseline of ~14 days
4. What is Microsoft's second-generation topological quantum chip called? — Majorana 2
5. Which global cybersecurity initiative, led by Anthropic, did India join this month? — Project Glasswing
6. What crop-yield improvement does ICAR-IIOR's Smart Seed Coating technology claim? — Up to 37%
7. Which drug became the first to delay Type 1 diabetes progression under NHS guidance? — Teplizumab (Tzield)
8. What is India's first indigenous distilled AI video-story-generation model called? — Varya
9. From what starting figure has India's startup count grown to roughly 2.3 lakh? — 350
10. Which fighter jet did Russia offer to co-produce with India at the Petersburg forum? — The Sukhoi Su-57

---