ISRO set its eyes on Venus, to return to Mars and Moon too!

Over the last decade, the Indian Space Research Organisation, popularly known as ISRO, has successfully conducted missions in the past to explore the lunar surface as well as the red planet Mars. You may remember them as Chandrayaan and Mangalyaan missions respectively. And now, the Indian space agency is all set to explore yet another neighbouring planet, Venus. Deemed as the mysterious twin of Earth, experts believe that an extensive Venus exploration will help understand the impacts of climate change on planetary systems.  

Reportedly, ISRO also plans on returning to Mars and aims to send a probe to the red planet as early as possible, as a sequel to the recently concluded Mangalyaan mission.  

Not only that, ISRO is also planning to traverse the dark side of moon as part of a joint mission with Japan. From what is known so far, ISRO has initiated talks with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and is ready to launch a lunar rover and lander. The goal is to study the permanent shadowed region of the moon (a zone never touched by sunlight). What’s interesting is that, the lander will be designed and developed by ISRO, while JAXA will pay attention to the analytical side. Sources also cite that the lander in concern will be placed in orbit with the help of a Japanese rocket that will be landing near the lunar south pole. From there, the rover will travel to the permanent shadowed region of the moon. This rover will be the same one used in Chandrayaan-3 (all set to launch in early 2023), considering it was greatly successful the first time.  

Wondering the significance of this upcoming lunar mission? Well, according to experts, it will help solve the mysteries surrounding the moon’s permanent shadowed region (PSR) that has so far remained unexplored due to its frigid nature. PSR is deemed as a time capsule and is predicted to hold keys to space secrets. Interestingly, all these were announced during the recently organised Akash Tattva conference that was conducted by Ahmedabad-based Physical Research Laboratory in Dehradun. The presentation was focused on “ISRO’s future missions.”  

In this context, ISRO’s recently announced solar mission Aditya L-1 was also mentioned. Aditya L-1 is all set to become India’s maiden mission to study the sun and is scheduled for 2023. After the successful launch of the Mars orbiter in 2013, this will be India’s second high-profile and cutting-edge space mission. Aditya is the Sanskrit for ‘sun.’ This mission is expected to be conducted from the sun’s halo orbit, also called the Lagrange Point 1 (L1), which is approximately 15 million kilometres distant from the earth. Aditya-1 will see a 400-kg class satellite with an equal payload capacity traverse along the L1 point and study coronal heating, solar wind acceleration, and coronal mass ejection, flares and near-Earth space weather.  

Of what is known so far, Chandrayaan-3 and Aditya L-1 are priorities for the next year. The rest will follow!