Indian Space Research Organisation is set to embark upcoming exploration missions after success of Chandrayaan-3 followed by launch of mission Aditya-L1.
With marking India as the fourth nation to make a targeted soft landing on Moon and after successful launch of a Sun exploration mission Aditya-L1, Indian Space Research Organisation is manufacturing and conducting tests for its next set of events planned to take off next year.
TV D1 flight test was recently conducted by ISRO as a part of development in future mission modules. With success of each tests, ISRO is stepping closer to secure India’s name in the list for huge contributions in exploring the space science.
So let’s take a short tour to all the missions planned by India’s space agency- ISRO for the year 2024 and what these missions are targeted for.
1. Mission Gaganyaan-1:
Gaganyaan is going to be India’s first ever mission to take humans into space, being prepared for its first flight test (which will be an unmanned flight test) to go off in 2024. Currently it is going through testing phases of various modules and functionalities. The eventual crewed mission will target to send a space flight with 3 humans in 2025 whereas the test flight carry no human shall be put into a lower orbit of earth- about 170x408 kilometres and then land back safely in the sea level of India. The Gaganyaan-1 test flight success will ensure India’s ability one step closer to send humans into space safely and continue with next series of events in Gaganyaan program.
Indian Space Research Organization recently tested Gaganyaan's Crew Escape System successfully on October 21, 2022 as a part of the mission's testing series. This test was required to ensure safety of humans by parting the crew module from craft and escaping it from space followed by landing back on earth safely.
2. NISAR:
NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) is a radar imaging mission building by NASA and ISRO to monitor weather and other natural phenomenon taking place on earth. The mission is being planned to lift off the ground around October, 2024.
Radar satellites are commonly used to spot flying objects like spacecrafts, events like weather formation process, variations in outer layer of earth and so on. Such satellites make use of remote sensing to spot objects with the help of its antenna as radar that enlightens and captures radio waves in the areas focused by radar to figure out their details. Like this way it can then build images with the acquired data though radar and process the same information to study the crust of earth and weather related information.
NISAR is getting ready at NASA and shall be launched from Satish Dhawan Space Center, Sriharikota in India. This mission’s outcome will provide India and USA with the detailed understanding of climate series, physical movement and behaviour of outer layer of earth(crust).
3. X-Ray Polarimeter Satellite (XPoSat):
A Polarimeter Satellite mission launched by only one space agency before Indian Space Research Organization, planning to take off soon either in December, 2023 or later, probably in 2024.
The mission envisages to acquire data on X-rays coming from various regions of space to understand them better. The satellite will be deployed in a lower orbital point of earth to polarise X-rays coming from all directions.
This satellite will carry solar panels that can detect high radiation coming from space and the polarimeter it has will filter scattered X-ray light into focused light which then can be analysed and studied by the various instruments in the craft module.
Understanding of high energies and radiation in the space like X-ray and others can unfold the better elaboration of the high energy space elements like black holes, neutron stars, etc. So with this mission’s success not only we can discover more about X-rays but also about the nature of their source objects.
There’s more to it:
These are some missions planning to be launched by ISRO in 2024 but there are other missions as well the Indian space agency is working on and planning to launch in the coming years. India has planned to discover more on space like Mars, Venus, Gaganyaan-2 and others.
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