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Isro Venus Mission
After the success of the Moon mission, ISRO has set sights on unlocking the mysteries of dying stars and exo-planets some of which are known to have atmosphere and are considered habitable, Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman S Somanath said on Tuesday. Delivering a lecture organised by the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), Somanath said the space agency was also planning a mission to study the planet Venus, two satellites to study space climate and its impact on the earth, and conceptualising a project to land a spacecraft on Mars. He said the XPoSat or the X-Ray Polarimeter Satellite, meant to study bright X-ray pulsars or stars that are in the process of death, was ready for launch in December this year. "We are also conceiving a satellite called ExoWorlds, a mission for looking at exo-solar planets or planets that are outside our solar system and orbiting other stars," Somanath said. He said there were more than 5,000 known exo-planets of which at least 100 were .
ISRO on Saturday successfully demonstrated a new technology with Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (IAD) that it said is a game-changer with multiple applications for future missions including to Mars and Venus. An IAD, designed and developed by ISRO's Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), was successfully test flown in a 'Rohini' sounding rocket from Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS). The IAD was initially folded and kept inside the payload bay of the rocket, according to the Bengaluru-headquartered Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). At around 84 km altitude, the IAD was inflated and it descended through atmosphere with the payload part of sounding rocket. The pneumatic system for inflation was developed by ISRO's Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC), it said. The IAD has systematically reduced the velocity of the payload through aerodynamic drag and followed the predicted trajectory. "This is the first time that an IAD is designed specifically for spe