India Venus Mission: ISRO plans to launch Shukrayaan mission in December 2024- Know about India's first

India Venus Mission: ISRO plans to launch Shukrayaan mission in December 2024- Know about India's first

India Venus Mission: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) plans to begin India's first Venus Mission 'Shukrayaan-I' in December 2024 window. The Shukrayaan mission is a planned orbiter to Venus to study the planet's surface and air .

Shukrayaan will be India's first orbiter mission to Venus behind sending similar missions to the Moon and Mars. The mission aims to study the surface of the hottest planet in our solar method and unravel the mysteries below the Sulfuric Acid clouds cover it.

ISRO Chairman S Somnath said in a recent meeting, "Building and putting a mission on Venus is possible for India in a very short space of time, as the ability today exists with India." He further details that the Venus mission has been devise , project report has been made and case has been place , and urged scientists to focus on high impact outcomes as were achieved by the Chandrayaan-I and Mangalyaan. The ISRO Chairman stressed on not copy what has already been done saying, "Goal is to reply that lone added knowledge survey can be done and see that we are not repeating what all has all time been done. Repeating some of them is not a crime but if we bring uniqueness, it will be have an impact globally." ISRO Space Science Programme Officer T Maria Antonita said in her presentation that no prior observation of the sub-surface of Venus has been done, "So, we will be flying the sub-surface radar for the first time. It will be penetrate the sub-surface of Venus upto a few hundred meters."

Shukrayaan mission launch date

ISRO aims to begin Shukrayaan mission in the December 2024 window with orbital maneuvers planned for the following year when earth and Venus would be aligned so near that the spacecraft could be put in its designated orbit using minimum propellant. If ISRO misses this window, the next time similar window would be to hand just in 2031.

Shukrayaan mission: Key Planned Experiments

• Investigation of the surface processes and shallow sub-surface stratigraphy, including active volcanic hotspots and lava flows
• Studying the structure, composition, and dynamics of the atmosphere
• study of solar wind interaction with the Venusian Ionosphere

Key Instruments

• The most important device will be a high resolution synthetic aperture radar to examine the Venusian surface that is covered by thick clouds.
• Instrument to examine the planet's atmosphere in infrared, ultraviolet and submillimeter wavelengths.
• Venusian Neutrals Analyzer to examine how charged particles from the sun interact with the atmosphere of Venus. ( Swedish- Indian collaboration)

International Instruments

• Venus Infrared Atmospheric Gases Linker (VIRAL) ( Collaboration between LATMOS, France and Russian federal space agency Roscosmos)
• IVOLGA: A laser heterodyne NIR spectrometer to study structure and dynamics of the Venusian mesosphere

Venus Missions

Several missions have flown to Venus since the 1960s but only a few in recent years. The European Space Agency's Venus Express orbited the planet between 2006 and 2014 and Japan sent Akatsuki spacecraft that entered the planet's orbit in 2015 behind a previous unsuccessful attempt. Akatsuki is one of the few missions that are operational around Venus.

The others involve spacecrafts performing flybys of Venus in the near future, involve NASA's Parker Solar Probe and ESA's BepiColombo en route to Mercury and the Solar Orbiter.The Soviet Union had sent a series of probes to Venus below the Venera programme between 1961 and 1984 to gather more details all over the planet, out of and that ten landed successfuly on the surface of the planet and 13 entered the Venusian atmosphere successfully.

However, the landers could just survive for a short period on the surface with the time ranking from 23 minutes to 2 hours due to extreme surface state on Venus. One of the longest surving probes on the planet's surface was NASA's Pioneer Venus Multiprobes, and that survived for about an hour after impacting the surface in 1978.

What is the name of India's first Venus Mission?

Shukrayaan-1 is the name of India's first Venus Mission. It is a wait to be begin in 2024. ISRO was initially aiming to begin the mission in mid-2023 but pandemic-related delays have pushed the begin date to December 2024. 

A backup begin Chance may be to hand in mid-2026 when Venus and Earth are next aligned to minimize spacecraft fuel use during the planetary transit. Shukrayaan is scheduled to launch aboard India's GSLV Mk II rocket.