ISRO ready for a packed 2024

Bengaluru: After the momentous landing on the moon's south pole, India has now set its sights on more challenging missions -- sending humans to space and getting samples from the lunar surface back to earth. Test flights for both the projects are scheduled in the new year. Furthering deep ocean exploration, the country is scheduled to send aquanauts on board the "Samudrayaan", first to a depth of 500 metres in March, and later, achieve its targeted depth of up to 6,000 metres.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is set to begin the new year with the launch of XPoSat. The X-Ray Polarimeter Satellite (XPoSat) will seek to unravel the mysteries of the sources of X-Rays and study the enigmatic world of black holes.

The satellite is set for launch on January 1 on board the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) from Sriharikota. This would be followed by the insertion of the Aditya L-1 satellite at the Lagrange Point-1 on January 6 at 4 pm from where it will have an uninterrupted view of the sun, its object of study for the next five years.

The new year will also see the launch of the NISAR satellite, a USD 1.2 billion joint project by NASA and ISRO. It will be the most expensive earth imaging satellite ever made to study climate change. The new year will witness two unmanned missions under the "Gaganyaan" project to validate the human-rated launch vehicle and the orbital module in actual flight.

In addition, multiple sub-orbital missions using a test vehicle are planned to validate the Gaganyaan Crew Escape System under various abort conditions, as ISRO eyes for a 2025 time slot to send an Indian to space in an Indian capsule.

The space agency, through its commercial arm NewSpace India Limited, also put 72 satellites of OneWeb, the Bharti Enterprises-backed satellite internet provider, into low-earth orbit on two separate missions of Launch Vehicle Mark-III (LVM-3), which was used for commercial launches for the first time. The private space sector too is eyeing its first commercial launch in 2024 with Skyroot Aerospace and Agnikul Cosmos getting ready their home-built launch vehicle to put small satellites in low earth orbits. "For the launch of Vikram-1, we are targeting the first half of 2024. The year 2024 will be a milestone year for us as we leap ahead to orbital launch capabilities which is critical for commercialisation of our launch services," said Skyroot Aerospace co-founder Pawan Kumar Chandana