PremiumAfter missions to the moon and Mars, the ISRO has now set its eyes on Venus and also plans to explore the dark side of the moon in collaboration with Japan
Following missions to the moon and Mars, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has turned its attention to Venus and is collaborating with Japan to explore the moon's dark side.
Anil Bhardwaj, the director of the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, said during a presentation on ISRO's upcoming missions at the Akash Tattva conference that the space agency also intended to send a probe to Mars.
Bhardwaj claimed that it was in discussions with JAXA about sending a lunar rover to investigate the moon's permanent shadow region.As per the initial plans, a lunar lander and rover built by ISRO will be put into orbit by a Japanese rocket with a planned landing near the south pole of the moon.
"The rover will then travel to the permanent shadow region of the moon which never sees sunlight," Bhardwaj said.
The exploration of the area, according to him, was interesting because anything that had remained in the PSR zone was analogous to having been frozen in place for all time.
In the Aditya L-1 mission, a 400-kg class satellite carrying the payload will be placed in an orbit around the Sun so that it can continuously view the star from a location known as the Lagrange Point L-1. The orbit, which would be 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, would study coronal heating, solar wind acceleration, the beginning of coronal mass ejections, flares, and near-Earth space weather.
Bhardwaj predicted that the Aditya L-1 and Chandrayaan-3 missions would be prioritised as early as next year, and that they would likely be followed by JAXA's missions to the moon and Venus.
Because it would be used again on a mission with JAXA, success of the lunar rover on board Chandrayaan-3 is crucial.
In January 2020, ISRO chief K Sivan had announced that India's third lunar mission, Chandrayan-3.. ISRO chief also said that some good progress was made on Chandrayan-2, even though it could not land successfully.
(With inputs from PTI)