ISRO to Launch Multiple Missions Following Chandrayaan-3
ISRO Chairman, Somanath S, has announced that the space agency has scheduled the launch of a climate observation satellite INSAT-3DS as well.
A test vehicle mission is also expected to be launched soon to validate the crew escape system for Gaganyaan, the country’s first human spaceflight mission. “(Then) we have to launch NISAR, the Indo-US built Synthetic Aperture Radar,” Somanath said in his Independence Day speech at the ISRO headquarters here on August 15. “So, our hands are full.” “We are going to build a large number of satellites for security purposes in the coming days as well,” Somanath said. According to ISRO officials, NASA-ISRO SAR (NISAR) is a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) observatory jointly developed by the US space agency NASA and ISRO. They said NISAR maps the entire Earth in 12 days and provides spatially and temporally consistent data to understand Earth’s ecosystems, ice mass, vegetation biomass, sea level rise, groundwater and natural hazards such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes and landslides. “It carries L and S dual-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) that works with Sweep SAR technology to achieve a large swath with high-resolution data. The Integrated Radar Instrument Structure (IRIS) and the SAR payloads mounted on the spacecraft’s orbit are collectively called the observatory,” an ISRO official stated. Before the Gaganyaan manned human spaceflight mission, ISRO has planned two unmanned missions. “We are gearing up for (the first of two) unmanned crewed module missions early next year,” an ISRO official said. The Gaganyaan mission aims to demonstrate the capability to carry out a human spaceflight mission to LEO on the Indian Launch vehicle. The orbital module consists of a crew module and a service module. The crew module, which is a pressurized module, serves as the crew’s living quarters. The orbit module is placed on a circular orbit of about 400 km around the earth for one to three days, and the crew module returns to a designated location at sea.
