After Chandrayaan-3: India's upcoming and past space missions
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[August 31, 2023]
BENGALURU (Reuters) - India is set to launch its next
space venture, a mission to study the sun and its effect on space
weather, days after the historical landing of its Chandrayaan-3 space
craft on the lunar south pole.
Here are highlights of the Indian Space Research Organization's (ISRO)
upcoming and past missions:
ADITYA-L1
Slated for launch on Sept. 2, the Aditya L1 (Aditya is a name for the
sun in the Hindi language) is the first Indian space mission to study
the sun. The spacecraft will be placed in an orbit around the Lagrange
point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system, about 1.5 million km (930,000
miles) from earth, where the gravitational effects of both bodies cancel
each other out. That "parking lot" in space allows objects to stay put
because of balancing gravitational forces, reducing fuel consumption by
the spacecraft.
The mission aims to observe solar activities and their effects on space
weather in real time.
In 2019, the government sanctioned the equivalent of about $46 million
for the Aditya-L1 mission. ISRO has not given an official update on
costs.
GAGANYAAN
India's first crewed space mission ("Gagan" means sky in Hindi, "yaan"
is craft) plans to launch a crew of three to an orbit of 400 km (250
miles) for a three-day mission before landing in Indian waters.
ISRO has said its Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre had successfully tested
systems for stabilizing the crew module and safely reducing its velocity
during re-entry.
Earlier this year, the deputy minister for science & technology,
Jitendra Singh, said about 90.23 billion rupees ($1.08 billion) had been
allocated for the Gaganyaan program. ISRO says it will focus on
achieving a sustained human presence in space once Gaganyaan is
completed.
No official kickoff date has been announced, but ISRO has said the
mission will most likely be ready in 2024.
NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR) SATELLITE
NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR) is a low-Earth orbit observatory system jointly
developed by NASA and ISRO. NISAR will map the entire planet once every
12 days, providing data for understanding changes in ecosystems, ice
mass, vegetation biomass, sea level rise, ground water and natural
hazards including earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and landslides.
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A view of the moon as viewed by the
Chandrayaan-3 lander during Lunar Orbit Insertion on August 5, 2023
in this screengrab from a video released August 6, 2023. ISRO/Handout
via REUTERS/File Photo
Roughly the size of an SUV, the satellite is set to be launched from
India in the first quarter of next year, with a target launch set
for January.
X-RAY POLARIMETER SATELLITE (XPoSat)
India is also building its first dedicated polarimetry mission to
study cosmic X-ray sources.
The mission is aimed at unfolding new frontiers in high energy
astrophysics and will allow in-depth investigations of neutron stars
and black hole sources.
ISRO has not set a launch date for this mission yet.
PAST MISSIONS:
* Chandrayaan-3 - On August 23, India became the first country to
safely land a craft in the moon's south pole region. The mission is
ongoing, with ISRO saying its rover had confirmed the presence of
sulphur, iron, oxygen and other elements on the moon.
* Chandrayaan-2 - In 2019, ISRO launched its second moon mission,
its first attempt to study the lunar south pole. The mission
included an orbiter, lander and rover, and was launched amid high
expectations. Although it deployed the orbiter successfully, the
lander crashed.
* Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) - In 2013, ISRO became the fourth space
agency to put a spacecraft in the Mars orbit. MOM, which had a
projected mission time of only six months, did not lose contact with
ground controllers until 2022.
* Chandrayaan-1 - India's first mission to the Moon was launched
successfully in 2008. The satellite made more than 3,400 orbits
around the moon and confirmed the presence of water ice on the moon;
the mission concluded when communication with the spacecraft was
lost on Aug. 29, 2009.
(Reporting by Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Gerry
Doyle and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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