Deep Ocean Mission & Samudrayaan
Samudrayaan is India's bid to put people on the deep-ocean floor: a crewed descent to 6,000 metres inside Matsya-6000, an indigenous titanium-sphere submersible built by NIOT under the Ministry of Earth Sciences' Deep Ocean Mission. Lok Sabha replies of 12 August 2026 set out where the seabed-mining half stands — exploration contracts with the International Seabed Authority covering nodules and sulphides, collection and crushing gear under development, and no commercial harvesting permitted yet — alongside about 19 biodiversity and fishery surveys of India's exclusive economic zone in three years.
- Samudrayaan
- Matsya-6000
- Deep Ocean Mission
- NIOT
- Ministry of Earth Sciences
- polymetallic nodules
- International Seabed Authority
- aquanaut
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More living notes in Science & Technology
- IndiaAI MissionAdded the 20 August 2026 AIKosh workshop - the datasets platform now lists over 15,000 datasets, 300 models and 30 toolkits - with the IndiaAI-NeGD-CDPI MoU on AI-enabled governance and data exchange and the EkStep MoU, plus NSDC's 23 August cloud-and-AI skilling drive with Cultus and AWS for 1,50,000 learners.
- ICAR -- Crop Varieties, Livestock Breeds, R&D and Agricultural EducationAdded the 16 indigenous animal breeds registered by ICAR-NBAGR on 7 August 2026 - Periyar cattle, the Kombai dog and the Sikkimese yak among them - which take India's registered breeds to 262 (258 indigenous, four synthetic), plus the 24 August launch of an Indian-bred non-GMO popcorn maize hybrid in Andhra Pradesh.
- Private Space Companies in IndiaAdds the National Space Day interaction of 23 August 2026, when space start-up founders briefed the Prime Minister: Skyroot, India's first space-technology unicorn, has three factories, capacity for a rocket a month and a pledge of one launch a month by mid next year; other founders described satellite engines now exported with government backing, a robotic craft to remove dead satellites, India's first docking-and-refuelling effort, a space-pharma start-up, eight launch contracts won in a month, and a global ground-station network within 18 months. The Prime Minister's message: consistent decisions build the trust risk-takers need, and India competes on cost, talent and appetite for risk.
- Indian Biotech BreakthroughsAdded three August 2026 lab results from DST institutes: RK-251, a prodrug that activates only inside tumour cells (IASST and IIT Guwahati); TZ-48 with the ADxFluor phone app for reading Alzheimer's amyloid in blood (JNCASR); and SAMBAR, the 575-person South Asian gut-microbiome baseline (BSIP). Restructured the capsule for faster reading; no earlier fact removed.
- India's Semiconductor Mission (ISM & Semicon 2.0)Aheesa's VIHAAN broadband chip - a DLI-backed design on the indigenous VEGA microprocessor - achieved first-pass silicon on Independence Day, and ECMS crossed its investment target: 31 new approvals take it to 106 applications and about Rs 69,000 crore committed.
- India's Semiconductor Mission (ISM & Semicon 2.0)Aheesa's VIHAAN broadband chip - a DLI-backed design on the indigenous VEGA microprocessor - achieved first-pass silicon on Independence Day, and ECMS crossed its investment target: 31 new approvals take it to 106 applications and about Rs 69,000 crore committed.