Daily Current Affairs for UPSC CSE
Topics Covered
- Hayabusa 2
- New Spider Species
- Konyak Dance
1 . Hayabusa 2
Syllabus : General Studies 3 Space
Context : A Japanese spacecraft, Hayabusa2, on Friday launched an explosive device at an asteroid, aiming to blast a crater in the surface and scoop up material that could shed light on how the solar system evolved.
About Hayabusa 2
- Hayabusa 2 was launched in December 2014 by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), to explore Ryugu, a primitive C-type (carbonaceous) asteroid.
- Ryugu is scarcely a kilometer across but is believed to contain an immense scientific treasure: pristine material left over from the primordial solar system of 4.6 billion years ago, an epoch preceding the coalescence of the sun’s retinue of planets.
- To study this science-rich rock, Hayabusa 2 has already created global maps from its orbital perch and also sent three small rovers down to the surface in late 2018. A fourth rover will be deployed later this year. B
- The mission’s foremost goal has always been to directly gather samples from the surface, using similar equipment first deployed on a predecessor mission, Hayabusa 1.
- The only previous asteroid sample-return mission, Hayabusa 1, returned dust grains from the S-type (or stony) asteroid Itokawa in June 2010, a less-pristine object thought to have formed considerably later than Ryugu in the solar system’s history.
About the News
- Hayabusa2 successfully released the so-called “small carry-on impactor” — a cone-shaped device capped with a copper bottom — as scheduled, as the probe hovered just 500 metres above the asteroid Ryugu.
- The impactor was programmed to explode 40 minutes later, propelling the copper bottom towards Ryugu, where it should gouge a crater into the surface of the asteroid that spins 300 million kilometres from Earth.
- Aim of the explosion was to blast a crater in the surface and scoop up material that could shed light on how the solar system evolved.
2 . New Spider Species
Syllabus : General Studies 3 Environment / General Studies 1 Geography
Context : A group of jumping spiders that mostly occur in Eurasia and Africa, has been spotted for the first time in Ernakulam’s Illithodu forests by arachnologists from Kochi’s Sacred Heart College, Thevara. The team also found that the spider belonging to the genus (a taxonomic classification above species) Habrocestumis a species new to science.
About the Spider
- A detailed examination of the spiders’ physical features revealed that they belong to the genus Habrocestum that has been recorded mostly in Eurasia and Africa and never in India, till now.
- Comparisons with studies of European Habrocestum spiders revealed that the spiders from Illithode are a new species altogether, for they had distinctly different reproductive organs.
- The spider also has a single long spine on the underside of both its first legs, and this gave it its scientific name Habrocestumlongispinum
Importance
- The study extends the range of these spiders to India.
- The discovery also lends support to the continental drift theory that suggests that the world’s continents were one large, contiguous landmass where these creatures thrived many millions of years ago
3 . Facts for Prelims
Konyak Dance
- Around 4,700 Konyak Naga women in their colourful traditional attire came together on Friday in an attempt to set a Guinness World Record for the “Largest Traditional Konyak Dance
- Konyak is one of the 16 Naga tribes and people of this community live mainly in the Mon district of Nagaland