Find Out What ISRO Chief Has to Say About India’s Asteroid Mission: Will We Follow in NASA’s Footsteps?
On October 13, NASA successfully initiated the Psyche mission, launching it from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Utilizing a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, this mission aims to investigate the metal-rich asteroid known as Psyche. The objectives of the Psyche mission encompass the examination of the asteroid’s core, surface, the relative ages of different regions, and more. This endeavor has generated considerable enthusiasm among both the scientific community and the general public worldwide. Consequently, people are curious to learn about the possibility of India embarking on a similar asteroid mission. To shed light on this matter, Sreedhar Somanath, a scientist from ISRO, shares his insights.
Is ISRO planning to undertake asteroid research projects like NASA’s Psyche mission?
Businessline quoted ISRO’s current director Sreedhar Somanath on the subject. Asked if ISRO has any plans to carry out an asteroid mining mission, he said: “It is far away, it needs advanced space robotics, mission management and ground infrastructure expansion, many test missions to return samples, for validation.”
Also, an astrochemist named Dr Chaitanya Giri from FLAME University, Pune, who was also part of the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, said that if India can land on the Moon, we can also land on an asteroid. Not that simple,” he said. Giri emphasizes exploring near-Earth asteroids like Eros, Itokawa, Bennu, Ryugy. “Rendezvous is one thing, sample return is another, and commercial mining is another,” Giri said.
As shown by the successful Chandrayaan-3 flight and the Aditya-L1 mission, India has developed from its strength in space exploration and ISRO has built a huge pool of scientists, so an asteroid mission is just a question. when and not if.
About the NASA Psyche mission
During the mission, NASA will study an asteroid called 16 Psyche, which is currently orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. It is reported to be three times further from the Sun than Earth. The asteroid is called metal-rich because it is composed of gold, silver and nickel. The spacecraft is expected to reach the asteroid’s orbit in 2029.
