The first nuclear test Pokhran was codenamed as;

Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas progressed towards manufacture in an enhanced, battle standard format on December 31. The LCA is being designed and developed by the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) in Bengaluru. A new limited clearance from military airworthiness certifier CEMILAC for the Indian fighter green-lights its production in a superior lethal version. HAL aims to get the first aircraft out in late 2019. The Indian Air Force (IAF) has asked Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) to make 40 LCA aircraft. Of this, 20 will be in the advanced Final Operational Clearance (FOC) format. Another 20 are in the earlier Initial Operational Clearance (IOC) version. The IAF has modified and upgraded its trainer requirement in its old package order of 40 LCA aircraft.

India successfully test fired the short range Quick Reaction Surface-to-Air Missile (QRSAM), developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) for the Indian Army, from a test range along the coast of Odisha. It is a sleek and highly mobile air defence system with a strike range of 25 km to 30 km and has a capability of engaging multiple targets. It is different from normal air defence system, as this is an all-weather, all-terrain missile with electronic counter measures against jamming by aircraft radars. It was first tested in June 2017 and followed by the second successful test in July 2017. It will replace the 'Akash' missile defence system which is on its way out due to technological obsolescence.

Cricket Australia have added seven-year-old Archie Schiller in the 15-member squad for the third Test of the series against India, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) on Boxing Day, December 26. He was co-captain alongside Tim Paine. Archie Schiller, who has endured 13 heart operations and spent half of his life in hospital after being diagnosed with a life-threatening congenital disease, had the dream of captaining the Australian cricket team. Make a Wish Australia and Cricket Australia, worked together to make Archie's cricket dreams come true.

Chang'e-4 lunar probe, a Chinese space probe, touched down on the far side of the moon. The probe, which has a lander and a rover, that was launched in December made the soft landing and transmitted the first-ever close-range image of the far side of the moon. It touched down at a targeted area near the moon's south pole in the Von Karman Crater. The purpose of the Chang'e-4 includes astronomical observation, surveying the moon's terrain, landform, and mineral makeup, and measuring the neutron radiation and neutral atoms to study the environment of its far side. The moon is tidally locked to Earth, rotating at the same rate as it orbits our planet, so most of the far side or dark side is never visible to us. Previous spacecraft have seen the far side, but none has landed on it. China's space agency hailed the event as a historic first and a major achievement for the country's space programme.

According to a new collaborative study by the Queen's University Belfast and Aberystwyth University in the UK, the sun's magnetic field is ten times stronger than previously thought. Using the Swedish one-metre Solar Telescope at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, in the Canary Islands, David Kuridze studied a particularly strong solar flare which erupted near the surface of the Sun on September 10, 2017. A combination of favourable conditions and an element of luck enabled the team to determine the strength of the flare's magnetic field with unprecedented accuracy. The researchers believe the findings have the potential to change our understanding of the processes that happen in the Sun's immediate atmosphere. The study found that the sun's corona extends millions of kilometres above the surface, measuring 1,400,000 kilometres across -- 109 times larger than Earth and 150,000,000 km from Earth. Solar flares appear as bright flashes and occur when magnetic energy that has built up in the solar atmosphere is suddenly released.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s Hubble Space Telescope ejected measurements validate that the Universe is expanding about 9% faster than expected based on its trajectory seen shortly after the big bang. It was published in Astrophysical Journal Letters on April 25.The researchers using Hubble as a "point-and-shoot" camera to look at groups of Cepheids using a new method called DASH (Drift And Shift), while Hubble can observe one star for every 90-minute orbit around Earth.Adam Riess, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy at The Johns Hopkins University, Nobel Laureate and the project's leader,is the first author of the research.

Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) announced cash awards of Rs 15 lakh per match for each of the playing eleven that featured in India's maiden Test Cricket series win on Australian soil. Virat Kohli and his team defeated Australia 2-1 in the four-match Test series, ending India's 71-year-old wait for the rare achievement. Congratulating the team, the BCCI also announced cash awards of seven and a half lakh rupees for all the reserve players, as well as the members of the support staff.

An international team of astronomers used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to study white dwarf stars within the globular cluster NGC 6752.

ISRO will launch a student satellite called 'Kalamsat' and an imaging satellite known as 'Microsat-R' on 24 January 2019. Both the satellite will be carried by 'PSLV C-44' rocket. PSLV is a four-stage launch vehicle. In PSLV-C44, the fourth stage (PS4) of the vehicle would be moved to a ?higher circular orbit so as to establish an orbital platform for carrying out experiments.

The 340m wide asteroid named 99942 Apophis will fly past Earth like a 'moving star- like point of light' on April 13, 2029. It will fly above the earth's surface at 30,500 km and first become visible with a naked eye in the night sky over the Southern Hemisphere from the east coast to the west coast of Australia.In 2004, astronomers at the Kitt Peak National Observatory based in Arizona discovered Apophis and claims about the chance of 2.7% that asteroid may impact Earth in 2029. However, further observation ruled out that chance but Apophis still has a small chance of impacting Earth which is less than 1 in 100,00- many decades from now.