UPSC Current Affairs Quiz: 3 November 2026 (Daily Prelims MCQs)

Statements 1 and 2 are correct. NavIC is a regional navigation system, and the NVS series adds the L1 band used by most civilian devices to the existing L5 and S bands. Statement 3 is wrong: the first-generation IRNSS satellites used imported atomic clocks, several of which failed; the NVS satellites carry at least one indigenous clock, as the Parliamentary Standing Committee had recommended.

IN-SPACe, set up in 2020 as an autonomous body under the Department of Space, authorises and supports non-government space activities. NSIL (2019) and Antrix are ISRO’s commercial arms, and the Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad is an ISRO centre. The Hindu’s editorial argued that India also needs a national space law on private participation and liability, building on the Indian Space Policy, 2023.

Only statement 2 is correct. Each of the 193 members has one vote, but General Assembly resolutions are recommendations, not binding law, unlike certain Security Council decisions under Chapter VII. That is why the embargo has continued despite resolutions nearly every year since 1992. Support fell to 130 votes in 2026, from 165 in 2025 and over 180 in most earlier years.

The Helms-Burton Act (1996) strengthened the U.S. embargo on Cuba, first imposed in 1962. India voted for the 2026 UNGA resolution against the embargo and called for ‘dialogue and diplomacy’. India’s stated policy is to follow sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council, not unilateral sanctions by individual countries, which also protects its ties with countries such as Iran and Russia.

All three statements are correct. The ISA was launched by India and France at COP21 in Paris in 2015, is headquartered at Gurugram, and became the first treaty-based international intergovernmental organisation to have its headquarters in India. The Bharat RE Summit (2-5 November 2026) also hosts the 4th International Conference on Green Hydrogen.

Curtailment means a solar or wind plant is told to reduce or stop generation, usually because transmission lines are full or demand is low at that time. It wastes cheap clean power and hurts investor returns. India’s non-fossil capacity has crossed 310 GW, so faster transmission, Green Energy Corridors and storage are needed to avoid it.

GRSE (Kolkata) will build five and Goa Shipyard Limited three. It is the first project in which Indian Navy-designed ships are built by Defence PSUs chosen through a competitive process. The corvettes will handle anti-surface and anti-submarine warfare, coastal defence and surveillance, and are expected to create about 72 lakh person-days of shipyard work.

Statements 1 and 3 are correct. India has 18 notified Biosphere Reserves, of which only 13 are in UNESCO’s World Network, so statement 2 is wrong. Nilgiri (1986) was the first. UNESCO’s Man and the Biosphere Programme began in 1971, and each reserve has a core zone, a buffer zone and a transition area. Biosphere Reserves have no separate law in India.

Soreng district in Sikkim is the first notified Organic Fisheries Cluster under PMMSY, the flagship fisheries scheme launched in 2020. On 2 November 2026 the Union Fisheries Minister launched a standard operating procedure for organic certification of fisheries in the Northeast. Sikkim became India’s first fully organic State in 2016.

The Eddington limit is the brightness at which radiation pushing outward balances gravity pulling matter inward. ULXs appear brighter than this, which points to super-Eddington accretion. The maximum mass of a white dwarf is the Chandrasekhar limit (about 1.4 solar masses), and the radius from which light cannot escape is the Schwarzschild radius. The study, by IIA and RRI in Bengaluru, used 24 years of X-ray data.