ISRO’s Mission Venus: 12 payloads that scientists are carrying along

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has asked the international space community to propose their scientific payloads to be carried along on its mid-2023-planned mission to Venus. India will be sending 12 scientific payloads aboard the satellite for the Venus mission. The final spacecraft is likely to have a payload capacity of close to 100 kg, with 500W of power, according to the ISRO website. ALSO READ | Union Minister Ananth Kumar passes away; lost a valuable colleague, says PM Modi

ISRO, on its website, said “proposals are solicited from the international scientific community for novel space-based experiments to study specific areas of science interest on Venus. This AO has a specific objective to identify important science experiments that strengthen/complements overall science from the suite of pre-selected proposals from India on ISRO’s Venus mission.” 

Venus is considered to be Earth’s “twin sister” because of similarities in size, mass, density, composition and gravity. The mission will focus on studying the surface and the sub-surface of the planet, atmospheric chemistry, and the interactions with solar radiation or solar winds.ISRO’s Mission Venus: 12 payloads that scientists are carrying along

S-Band synthetic aperture radar (SAR)   Advanced radar for topside ionosphere and subsurface sounding  Ultraviolet (UV) imaging spectroscopy telescope  Thermal camera  Cloud monitoring camera  Venus atmospheric spectro polarimeter Airglow photometer  Radio occultation experiment  Ionospheric electron temperature analyser  Retarding potential analyser   Mass spectrometer  Plasma wave detector

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“This is the natural progression for ISRO. For years, India’s space missions focussed on its local and economic usability. If the organisation has to progress and compete with other major space programmes, it will have to look at pure exploratory missions like Chandryaan and Mangalyaan,” Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, head of the Nuclear and Space Policy Initiative at Observer Research Foundation was quoted by the Hindustan Times as saying.

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