After Chandrayaan-3’s Success, A Look At India’s Upcoming Space Missions

NDTV News:

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 Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) upcoming and past missions:

Slated for launch on Sept. 2, the Aditya L1 ( “Aditya” is sun in Hindi) 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.