The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), which has already conducted missions to the moon and Mars, is now focusing on Venus in addition to its plans to study the moon’s dark side in cooperation with Japan.
Anil Bhardwaj, Director of the Ahmedabad-based Physical Research Laboratory, said the space agency planned to send a probe to Mars during a presentation on ISRO’s next missions at the Akash Tattva conference.
According to Mr. Bhardwaj, there have been discussions on deploying a lunar rover to investigate the moon’s permanent shadow region with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).
According to the initial plans, a Japanese rocket will launch an ISRO-built lunar lander and rover into orbit with a planned landing site close to the south pole of the moon.
He claimed that the examination of the area was fascinating since anything that had persisted in the PSR zone was analogous to something that had been frozen for aeons.
According to Mr. Bhardwaj, the Aditya L-1 will be a special mission in which a payload-carrying 400-kg class satellite will be put into an orbit around the Sun so that it may continually 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.
According to Mr. Bhardwaj, the Aditya L-1 and Chandrayaan-3 missions would be prioritised starting as early as next year, and the missions to Venus and the moon with JAXA would likely follow.
The lunar rover on board Chandrayaan-3 needed to be successful because it will be used again on a mission with JAXA.
