SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 13 September 2025, Shift 2 · General Awareness · Question 24 of 100

We transcribed this text from the pictures on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; the answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 13 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. From 2025 the candidate response sheet prints every question and option as a picture, so the text here is transcribed from those pictures for this shift and checked against them independently; where the layout carries meaning, the picture is shown as well. Each answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. SSC released a tentative key for challenge and later its final one, both only to candidates behind a login, and the sheet does not say which of the two it carries. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

NISAR’s orbit regime is?

(a)GTO
(b)GEO
(c)Polar sun-sync
(d)LEEO

Answer

Why

Correct — C. NISAR, the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite, flies a sun-synchronous polar orbit → option (c).

The near-polar track carries it over almost all of Earth's land and ice, and being sun-synchronous it passes over each place at the same local solar time, so repeat radar images can be compared.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
GTO — GTO, the geosynchronous transfer orbit, is a temporary elliptical path a satellite follows on its way up to geostationary height. It is not a working orbit for an Earth-mapping radar.
(b)
GEO — GEO sits about 35,786 km above the equator and keeps pace with Earth's rotation, suiting communication and weather satellites. It hovers over one longitude, the opposite of NISAR's pole-to-pole mapping.
(d)
LEEO — LEEO is not a standard orbit name. Read as a low Earth equatorial orbit, it fails: an equatorial track never passes over high latitudes, which NISAR must map.

Concept

A sun-synchronous orbit is a near-polar orbit tilted slightly past 90°, so that its plane turns about 1° a day, keeping step with Earth's yearly path round the Sun. The satellite then passes over each place at the same local solar time.

NISAR was launched on 30 July 2025 on GSLV-F16 from Sriharikota into such an orbit, inclined at about 98°. It carries NASA's L-band and ISRO's S-band radars.

NISAR's orbit, under 800 km up, is also a low Earth orbit, so 'polar sun-sync' is the more specific description of the same path.

Key facts

NISAR launched on 30 July 2025 aboard GSLV-F16 from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota.
Its orbit is sun-synchronous and near-polar, inclined at about 98°.
It carries NASA's L-band and ISRO's S-band synthetic aperture radars, with a 12 m deployable mesh antenna.
GEO lies about 35,786 km above the equator.

Study next

Orbit types: LEO, MEO, GEO, GTO and sun-synchronousSynthetic aperture radar and why it images through cloud and darknessPSLV and GSLV: which launch vehicle for which orbit

Common traps

Marking a low-orbit option because NISAR does fly low: the question asks for the regime, and polar sun-synchronous names it exactly.
Confusing GTO with GEO: GTO is the transfer path, GEO the destination.

The same orbit is asked at 15 Sep 2025, 09:00, GA Q.13 (keyed: SSO, with LEO also offered), the revisit cycle at 16 Sep 2025, 12:30, GA Q.13 (keyed: 12 days), and the radar bands at 19 Jan 2026, 11:00, Tier-II Paper-I GA Q.10 (keyed: L- and S-band).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Economic Scene — all 144 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.