India will boldly go to Venus for the first time and re-visit the red planet very soon. Buried and hidden in the hundreds of pages of the new-format electronic budget documents, is the first formal acknowledgement by the government about these two new bold inter-planetary sojourns to Earth’s immediate neighbours.
This uplifting news comes ahead of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) attempting to undertake its mega launch where it will place not five, ten or twenty, but a record 104 satellites in space in a single mission. No other country has ever tried to hit a century in a single mission.
23% Increase in Space Budget
If all goes according to plan, on the morning of 15 February, ISRO will put 104 satellites in space using the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). Three satellites will be from India and a 101 other satellites are from different countries.
India’s ISRO, considered a leading space organisation globally, is one of the best and most competitive in the multi-billion-dollar space launch market. It hopes to set an enviable benchmark for other nations.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made science and technology, research and space programmes as one of his government’s top priorities. To give it a boost, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has given the Department of Space a massive 23 percent increase in this year’s budget. Under the space sciences section, the budget mentions provisions for “Mars Orbiter Mission II and Mission to Venus”.
Mission Venus
The second mission to Mars is tentatively slated for 2021-2022 and as per existing plans it might even involve putting a robot (rover) on the surface of the red planet. While India’s first mission to Mars undertaken in 2013 was a purely Indian mission, the French space agency has shown keenness to collaborate in making the Mars rover for the second mission.
The second Indian mission to Mars will aim at exploring the planet in detail from its surface as the first mission – the Mars Orbiter Mission or MOM – is performing well while orbiting the planet.
India's maiden mission to Venus, the second planet in our solar system, is likely to be an orbiter mission, similar to the first mission to mars.
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