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India plans to launch a new orbiter to Venus in 2024, a year later than expected, according to media reports.
The Shukrayaan orbiter will be the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) first mission to Venus and will study the planet for four years, according to SpaceNews, which cited a presentation by an ISRO researcher to a panel. approved by NASA on November 10. .
ISRO has been soliciting instrument ideas for a Venus-based mission since at least 2018, according to its website. At the Planetary Science Committee, ISRO’s T. Maria Antonita presented more information on Shukrayaan during a discussion on NASA’s new 10-year plan for planetary science, SpaceNews reported.
Related: India looks beyond the moon to Mars, Venus, and astronaut missions
“ISRO was aiming for a launch in mid-2023 when it published its call for instruments in 2018, but Antonita told members of the planning committee for the National Academies’ Decennial Survey last week that delays related to the pandemic had pushed back Shukrayaan’s target launch date to December 2024, “SpaceNews said in a Nov. 19 report.
An emergency launch opportunity is available when Venus and Earth are aligned in mid-2026, so as to minimize the fuel consumption of spacecraft during planetary transit, Antonita added.
Shukrayaan is set to embark on the Indian GSLV Mk II rocket, but she may use the more powerful GSLV Mk III rocket to carry more instruments or fuel, Antonita told the committee. ISRO will make a final decision within the next three to six months.
The spacecraft will carry several instruments to probe the Venusian environment. The flagship instrument will be a synthetic aperture radar to examine the Venusian surface, which is shrouded in thick clouds that make it impossible to see the surface in visible light. An earlier version flew on the Indian Spaceship Chandrayaan-2 orbiting the moon, Space News reported.
Another instrument will be a Swedish-Indian collaboration known as the Venusian Neutrals Analyzer, which will examine how charged particles from the sun interact with the atmosphere of Venus, according to The Economic Times. An earlier generation of this instrument launched on the Indian Chandrayaan-1 2008-09 lunar mission, studying how particles from the sun affect a world with a much thinner atmosphere.
Shukrayaan will also bring an instrument to Venus to examine the planet’s atmosphere in infrared, ultraviolet and submillimeter wavelengths, Antonita said. Earlier in 2020, scientists announced the possible detection of phosphine – a friendly element – in the atmosphere of Venus, although many members of the scientific community remain skeptical of the results.
In September, the French space agency (CNES) announced it would also pilot an instrument on Shukrayaan. The Venus Infrared Atmospheric Gases Linker (VIRAL) is a collaboration with the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos. Antonita added that other instruments have been shortlisted and India is considering flying an instrument from Germany.
Dozens of missions have flown to Venus since the 1960s, but only a few in recent years. For example, the European Space Agency’s Venus Express orbit the planet between 2006 and 2014, and the Japanese spacecraft Akatsuki entered orbit in 2015 after a previous unsuccessful attempt. Several spacecraft are also performing flyovers over Venus in the near future, including NASA’s Parker solar probe for solar observation and the European BepiColombo en route to Mercury.
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
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