Since Chandrayaan-3, what has India’s space programme been up to? | Explained Premium

India's space programme in 2023-2024, including lunar and solar missions, astronaut training, and future plans for space exploration, on the occasion of National Space Day.

After a busy 2023, things have been quiet at Sriharikota, India’s spaceport. But silence at the spaceport does not imply that India’s space programme itself has been dormant. A lot has been happening since the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully landed the lander of its Chandrayaan 3 mission, Vikram, on the surface of the moon.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has declared this date, August 23, India’s National Space Day.

Aditya L1: India followed its lunar success with the successful launch of its solar science mission Aditya-L1 on September 2, 2023. The launch was the easiest part of the mission, onboard ISRO’s workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). The spacecraft executed a series of manoeuvres to move into an orbit around the first earth-Sun Lagrange point, called L1, on January 6, 2024. It completed its first orbit around L1 on July 2, 2024. In this time, it studied a solar storm in May 2024 together with observatories on the ground and spacecraft in lunar orbit.

Gaganyaan TV-D1: ISRO used a modified L-40 Vikas engine to build its Test Vehicle (TV) that it used to perform the first abort mission (TV-D1) on October 21, 2023, as part of its ‘Gaganyaan’ human spaceflight mission. The mission demonstrated the ability of the Crew Escape System (CES) to separate from the TV, take the crew module to safety, and the crew module’s ability to decelerate before splashing down in the Bay of Bengal. The crew module at the test’s end was recovered by the Indian Navy vessel INS Shakthi.

XPoSat: ISRO celebrated the new year with the launch of its X-ray Polarimeter Satellite (XPoSat) on January 1, 2024. The satellite will study how radiation is polarised and thus learn more about various sources of radiation in space. It is the second such space-based observatory after NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IPEX), launched in 2021. The two instruments on board XPoSat, called XSPECT and POLIX, began operating after launch on January 5 and 10.

INSAT-3DS: ISRO launched the meteorological satellite INSAT-3DS on February 17 onboard a Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV). This mission was important to prove the vehicle’s credibility before the critical NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, now expected to be launched in the first quarter of 2025. This version of the GSLV had previously successfully launched the NVS-01 satellite in 2023.

RLV-TD: ISRO used a downscale version of the Reusable Launch Vehicle, called Pushpak, to conduct two landing experiments (LEX-02 and LEX-03) on March 22 and June 7 at its Aeronautical Testing Range in Challakere, Karnataka. The tests simulated landing conditions from space by dropping the Pushpak vehicle from a Chinook helicopter. While LEX-02 dropped Pushpak along its landing path, LEX-03 dropped it 500 metres to one side. The success of these tests gave ISRO the confidence to move on to the Orbital Return Flight Experiment (OREX).