In this guide
Many CLAT aspirants come from humanities or commerce backgrounds and approach science news with some dread. There is no need. CLAT does not test physics. It tests whether you can read a passage about a mission or a technology and know the basic context: which agency, what the mission is for, where it went, and what a few recurring terms mean.
That context is limited and learnable. A few launch vehicles, a few kinds of orbit, a handful of missions and the main policy frameworks cover most of what appears.
What to follow
- Space: ISRO launches and missions, major international missions, India's human spaceflight programme.
- Digital policy: data protection, artificial intelligence, digital public infrastructure, semiconductors, telecom.
- Health: disease outbreaks, vaccines, WHO declarations and agreements.
- Defence technology: major missile tests, new platforms and indigenisation milestones.
- Awards and discoveries only when they are widely reported, such as the Nobel Prizes in science.
ISRO basics
| Item | Fact |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1969 |
| Headquarters | Bengaluru |
| Main launch site | Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota (Andhra Pradesh) |
| PSLV | Workhorse launcher, especially for polar and sun-synchronous orbits |
| GSLV | Uses a cryogenic upper stage; for heavier satellites to higher orbits |
| LVM3 | ISRO's heaviest launcher; carried Chandrayaan-2 and Chandrayaan-3 |
| SSLV | Small launcher for small satellites on short notice |
Missions worth knowing
- Chandrayaan-1 (2008): India's first Moon mission; its instruments contributed to the detection of water molecules on the lunar surface.
- Mars Orbiter Mission (launched 2013): entered Mars orbit in September 2014, making India the first country to reach Mars orbit on its first attempt.
- Chandrayaan-3: landed near the Moon's south pole on 23 August 2023, now observed as National Space Day. The mission had a lander (Vikram) and a rover (Pragyan).
- Aditya-L1 (launched 2023): India's first space-based solar observatory, stationed near the Sun–Earth L1 point.
- Human spaceflight (as of 2025): in 2025, Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla of the Indian Air Force flew to the International Space Station on the Axiom-4 mission, the first Indian to visit the ISS. The Gaganyaan programme aims to launch Indian astronauts on an Indian vehicle.
Orbits in plain words
| Orbit | Height and feature | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Low Earth orbit | Up to about 2,000 km | Earth observation, space stations |
| Sun-synchronous (polar) | Passes over each area at the same local time | Imaging and mapping |
| Geostationary | About 36,000 km above the equator; one orbit per day, so it seems fixed in the sky | Communication and weather |
| Halo orbit around a Lagrange point | Loops around a point of balance between two large bodies | Solar and deep-space observatories |
Digital and health frameworks
- Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023: India's general data protection law.
- Digital public infrastructure: Aadhaar (run by UIDAI) and UPI (run by the National Payments Corporation of India) are the examples most often cited.
- IndiaAI Mission (2024): the national programme for AI computing capacity, datasets and skills.
- World Health Organization: headquartered in Geneva. Under the International Health Regulations (2005), it can declare a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. In 2025 the World Health Assembly adopted a Pandemic Agreement (as of 2025).
How to note science news
One line per story: Mission or development — agency — date — purpose — one feature. Leave out technical detail you could not explain to a friend in a sentence. CLAT tests awareness, not specialist knowledge.
A sample CLAT-style passage
In any system of two large bodies, such as the Sun and the Earth, there are five positions where a small object can keep a fixed position relative to both. At these points, the gravitational pull of the two bodies and the motion of the small object balance one another. They are called Lagrange points, after the eighteenth-century mathematician who studied them, and are labelled L1 to L5.
Three of them, L1, L2 and L3, lie on the line joining the two bodies. They are unstable: a spacecraft placed there tends to drift away and must make small corrections to stay close. L4 and L5 lie ahead of and behind the smaller body in its orbit and are stable, which is why natural objects such as asteroids collect there.
For the Sun–Earth system, L1 lies about 1.5 million kilometres from the Earth in the direction of the Sun, roughly one per cent of the distance between the two. A spacecraft there has an uninterrupted view of the Sun, never blocked by the Earth or the Moon. The Sun–Earth L2 point, on the far side of the Earth, offers the opposite advantage: the Sun, Earth and Moon are all behind the spacecraft, making it ideal for telescopes that need cold and darkness. The James Webb Space Telescope operates there.
The Earth's magnetic field and atmosphere shield the surface from most of the particles the Sun throws out, but satellites in orbit have far less protection. That is why space agencies want early warning of solar activity. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, a joint mission of the European Space Agency and NASA launched in 1995, has watched the Sun from near L1 for decades.
India's [1] was launched in September 2023 on a PSLV rocket and placed in a halo orbit around L1 in January 2024. The journey to L1 took about four months. It carries seven instruments to study the Sun's outer layers, including the corona, as well as the solar wind and the magnetic environment near L1. Continuous observation from L1 matters because solar storms can damage satellites, disrupt communication and affect power grids on Earth.
Q1. Which mission fills [1]?
(a) Chandrayaan-3 (b) Gaganyaan (c) Mangalyaan (d) Aditya-L1
Q2. According to the passage, which Lagrange points are stable?
(a) L1 and L2 (b) L1, L2 and L3 (c) L4 and L5 (d) All five
Q3. Why is L1 useful for studying the Sun, according to the passage?
(a) The Sun is never blocked by the Earth or the Moon.
(b) It is closer to the Sun than Mercury.
(c) It is the coldest point in the solar system.
(d) Spacecraft there need no corrections.
Q4. Which launch vehicle carried the mission, according to the passage?
(a) LVM3 (b) PSLV (c) GSLV (d) SSLV
Q5. Which of the following Indian missions landed near the Moon's south pole?
(a) Chandrayaan-1 (b) Chandrayaan-2 (c) Chandrayaan-3 (d) Aditya-L1
Answers:
- (d) A solar mission at L1, launched in 2023: Aditya-L1.
- (c) Stated in the second paragraph.
- (a) Stated. (d) contradicts the passage: L1 is unstable and needs corrections.
- (b) Stated.
- (c) Background. Chandrayaan-3's lander touched down near the south pole on 23 August 2023. Chandrayaan-2's lander did not achieve a soft landing in 2019, and Chandrayaan-1 was an orbiter with an impactor probe.
Common mistakes
- Confusing launch vehicles. Tie each mission to its rocket: Aditya-L1 on PSLV, Chandrayaan-3 on LVM3.
- Mixing up L1 and L2. L1 faces the Sun (solar observatories); L2 faces away (deep-space telescopes).
- Writing too much detail. Instrument names and orbit parameters rarely matter. Purpose, agency and "firsts" do.
- Ignoring health and digital policy. Space dominates the headlines, but WHO declarations and data protection laws appear in passages too.
What to do next
- Make a one-page ISRO sheet: launch vehicles, launch site and five key missions.
- Learn the four orbit types in the table above.
- Note every launch and major science story this month in one line each.
- Read environment and climate in the news and economy and business in the news.
A note on dates and numbers. Exam patterns, vacancies and schedules change from year to year. Always confirm the current details in the latest notification on the Consortium of National Law Universities website .
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