Indian Space Program: News & Discussions
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Aditya-L1 Mission: Completion of First Halo Orbit
July 2, 2024
Today, Aditya-L1 spacecraft has completed its first halo orbit around the Sun-Earth L1 point. The Aditya-L1 mission is an Indian solar observatory at Lagrangian point L1, launched on September 2, 2023, and was inserted in its targeted halo orbit on January 6, 2024. Aditya-L1 spacecraft in the Halo orbit takes 178 days to complete a revolution around the L1 point.
During its travel in the halo orbit, Aditya-L1 spacecraft will be subjected to various perturbing forces that will cause it to depart from the targeted orbit. It underwent two station-keeping maneuvers on February 22 and June 7, respectively, to maintain this orbit. Today's 3rd station-keeping maneuver has ensured that its travel continued in to the second halo orbit path around L1.
This journey of Aditya L1 around Sun-Earth L1 Lagrangian point involves modeling of complex dynamics. The understanding of various perturbing forces acting on the spacecraft helped in determining the trajectory accurately and planning precise orbit maneuvers. With today's maneuver, the state-of-the-art flight dynamics software developed in-house at URSC-ISRO for the Aditya-L1 missions stands fully validated.
The blue trajectory, in the figure, is the orbit around the Lagrangian point L1. This trajectory is a 3-dimensional trajectory, and what is shown is the projection of it in the X-Y plane. SK#1, 2 & 3 are the Station Keeping maneuvers by the Aditya-L1 spacecraft. The final firing of the thrusters, ie. SK#3 on July 2 placed the spacecraft back in the required orbit. If an accurate firing was not done, the spacecraft would have moved away in a trajectory shown in green colour. The X-Y axes are marked in distance of km, with Lagrangian point L1 at the origin.
Aditya-L1 Mission: Completion of First Halo Orbit
Moon Monday #183 and Indian Space Progress #17: The one where Chandrayaan and Gaganyaan converge
How will ISRO go from Chandrayaan 3 to an Indian on the Moon? Clarifying and laying down India’s plans for increasingly complex robotic lunar missions, where human spaceflight comes in, and what realistic timelines look like.
Jatan Mehta
Jul 8, 2024 — 11 min read
The successful touchdown of Chandrayaan 3 on the Moon last year was pivotal for India’s space ambitions as well as for global lunar exploration. Having taken place amid many lunar landing failures, Chandrayaan 3 kept the worldwide momentum for the Moon going by feeding into the frenzy of sending robotic explorers to our cosmic companion. Chandrayaan 3 changed perspectives developed space powers had of India’s ability to explore space beyond Earth orbit. Internally too, paired with the new national space policy, the Moon landing signaled the Indian government to let ISRO not only double down on lunar exploration but go many steps further and develop a roadmap for human spaceflight which converges with Chandrayaan at the Moon—best highlighted by late last year’s announced national goal of sending an Indian to Luna by 2040.
An initial integrated lunar and crewed exploration roadmap for India. Image: S. Somanath/ISRO.
Now, to be clear, ISRO lacks the kind of resources for its space program that NASA and CNSA enjoy, with governmental Indian space funding being only a tenth to twentieth of China and the US, and private funding for deep space exploration being nearly zero. Despite the many highs of 2023 for Indian space, the FY 2024-25 budget of $1.58 billion for the country’s Department of Space—of which ISRO gets the major chunk—has essentially not budged. As such, India’s progress towards these lofty robotic and crewed lunar goals will be gradual at best. Timelines of missions even in the “Near Term” phase of the aforementioned roadmap should be taken as seriously as those under NASA’s Artemis program.
Having said that, each milestone mission is interesting in itself for the space exploration abilities it unlocks for India and its partners. The biggest of those partners is now the US, thanks to last year’s joint government announcements of broad Indo-US sci-tech collaborations as well as India’s signing of the Artemis Accords. Since official information from ISRO regarding India’s lunar and crewed exploration plans remains vague and scattered in bits and pieces, which also make it difficult for media reports to capture missions in context, this piece is my attempt at clarifying and laying down everything we know about ISRO’s plans for undertaking increasingly complex robotic Chandrayaan missions, where human spaceflight comes in, and what realistic timelines look like.
Upcoming Chandrayaan missions
The Chandrayaan 3 lander Vikram imaged by the mission’s rover Pragyan on August 30. Image: ISRO.
The list of missions below is in a realistic order of their likelihood plus the definitiveness of their objectives, with missions down the line being increasingly murky representations of the lunar capabilities India would like to achieve.
- Chandrayaan 4: Lunar sample return mission (by end of decade)
- ISRO-JAXA LUPEX: A rover to study polar lunar water (by end of decade)
- Chandrayaan 5: Demonstrate frigid lunar night survival to enable long-term lunar missions (early 2030s)
- Chandrayaan 6: Demonstrate use of lunar resources towards building infrastructure and habitats (mid 2030s)
- Chandrayaan 7 (late 2030s): Tap into lunar water for building fuel stations that ultimately sustain long-term lunar living, and potentially also enable advanced deep space missions that could launch from Luna as part of their mission profile.
Upcoming Gaganyaan missions
Initial set of Gaganyaan human spaceflight missions following ISRO’s first crewed orbital flight demonstration. Slide image: M. Mohan.
At the India Space Congress 2024 in New Delhi late June, the Director of ISRO’s Human Space Flight Center (HSFC), M. Mohan, provided clarity on what human spaceflight missions India aims to undertake after the initial demonstration of a crewed orbital Gaganyaan flight mid-decade.
- ISS: One of the four Indian astronaut candidates will fly to the International Space Station early 2025 on a NASA-contracted Axiom Space mission aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. The specific Axiom mission would either be Ax-4 or Ax-5, depending on the closing of many multi-organizational agreements involved in the deal.
- HLVM3-H1: First crewed Gaganyaan flight with one or two astronauts (from the aforementioned four) flying on an indigenously developed rocket and crew capsule late mid-decade (Mission duration: 1 day)
- [Note: The term HLVM3 refers to ISRO’s human-rated LVM3 rocket]
- The pacing item for this mission remains the Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS), whose feasibility ISRO is still evaluating, and so a crewed Gaganyaan flight will likely not take place mid-decade.
- HLVM3-H2: Second crewed Gaganyaan flight (Mission duration: 3 days)
- LVM3-G4: ISRO’s first cargo supply mission to the International Space Station (under consideration with ISS partner countries for end of decade
- [Note: LVM3-G1 through LVM3-G3 are likely the mission names for the uncrewed Gaganyaan test flights taking place before HLVM3-H1]
- BAS-B1: First module of India’s upcoming space station called the Bharatiya Antarikhsha Station (BAS), which translates to “Indian Space Station”, to be put into Earth orbit (end of decade at best)
- LVM3-G5: First cargo supply mission to BAS-B1
- Multi-module BAS: Late 2030s
Where Chandrayaan and Gaganyaan converge
- HVM1: An uncrewed test flight of a human-capable spacecraft going to the Moon and splashing back on Earth safely (early 2030s; mission akin to NASA’s Artemis I).
- HVM2: A crewed flight to the Moon and back (mid-2030s; mission akin to Artemis II and Apollo 8)
- Lunar cruiser: A crew-capable ISRO spacecraft docking with the NASA-led Gateway lunar orbital habitat, and potentially supplying cargo via a robotic configuration (late 2030s)
- HVM3: An Indian landing on Luna, with or without a potential Gateway docking in the mix (2040s, akin to CNSA’s first crewed lunar mission)
You’re reading a combined special edition of my Moon Monday and Indian Space Progress newsletters! Many thanks to Open Lunar Foundation, Takshashila Institution, KaleidEO, PierSight, and Gurbir Singh for sponsoring this piece!
If you love my work too, join them and support independent writing and journalism.
Chandrayaan 4 sample return
One of the mission profiles and its elements considered for ISRO’s upcoming Chandrayaan 4 sample return mission. Newer studies show both launchers being LVM3s instead. Image: ISRO / S. Somanath.
Because India’s most powerful rocket, the Launch Vehicle Mark III (LVM3), has less than half the payload capacity of China’s Long March 5 rocket which enabled CNSA to undertake the Chang’e 5 and Chang’e 6 sample return missions, ISRO’s approach to bringing lunar samples with Chandrayaan 4 instead involves two rocket launches from Earth. In a March interview with Chethan Kumar for the Times of India, ISRO Chief S. Somanath said that with the preliminary studies of such a mission architecture complete, ISRO will soon submit a funding proposal to the Indian government for commissioning Chandrayaan 4.
With Chandrayaan 3, the agency hit several extended goals too. One of these was pulling the mission’s propulsion module from lunar orbit to Earth orbit, thereby demonstrating a small but key capability that will be required to pull off a robotic sample return mission in the future.
One of the most complex parts of Chandrayaan 4 would be remotely docking two or more robotic modules in lunar orbit, a feat only China has achieved so far. And so—as Kalyan Ray reports—ISRO will launch the ~$14 million SPADEX (space docking experiment) mission end of this year (but likely early next), wherein two spacecraft will practice docking in Earth orbit. This will buy down risk not only for Chandrayaan 4 but for the aforementioned Gaganyaan cargo flights to the International Space Station and India’s BAS-B1 station module later this decade. Naturally, all these missions will feed into enabling ISRO to send humans to the Moon, wherein large modules will need to safely dock with each other.
The Indo-Japanese rover mission
Top left: Illustration of an ISRO lander having delivered the stowed JAXA-built LUPEX rover to the Moon; Top right and bottom left: The LUPEX rover traversing the lunar south pole; Bottom right: An early LUPEX prototype testing drive system performance in a simulated lunar soil pit. Images: JAXA/Mitsubishi.
India and Japan are collaborating on a lunar polar rover mission called LUPEX. The nominal six-month mission comprises an ISRO-developed lander which will deliver a JAXA-built ~350-kilogram rover to directly study the nature, abundance, and accessibility of water ice at the Moon’s south pole (between 89–90°S). This makes LUPEX similar to CNSA’s Chang’e 7 and NASA’s VIPER missions. To safely and precisely land LUPEX amid unforgiving lunar polar terrain, ISRO will build the lander with input from both Chandrayaan 3’s success and that of JAXA’s SLIM lunar lander. LUPEX builds on the previous Indo-Japanese lunar collaboration of ISRO’s Chandrayaan 2 orbiter helping JAXA nail SLIM’s goal of a precision lunar landing.
In the March interview with Chethan Kumar for the Times of India, ISRO Chief Somanath said that work is progressing slowly on new throttle-able engines needed for the LUPEX mission’s big 6,000-kilogram ISRO lander. In a November 2023 talk at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Director of ISRO’s Space Applications Center Nilesh Desai said that LUPEX will be executed in no less than five years—as was to be realistically expected but not previously clarified by ISRO or JAXA.
While the Japanese government has approved the LUPEX mission, India is yet to. This formal green light is expected soon but we aren’t there yet. The lander’s preliminary design review seems to be pending too. The rover’s development is farther along but its instruments aren’t finalized yet despite it being originally expected to be done over a year ago. Landing site selection studies for LUPEX have been ongoing, feeding into as well as building on ISRO’s ongoing aid to NASA for planning crewed Artemis missions.
Chandrayaan 5 lunar night survival
Left: The nuclear device powering deep space missions like Mars 2020. Image: NASA; Right: A radioactive plutonium-238 dioxide pellet, used in NASA’s Cassini mission as a power source. Image: Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Virtually nothing is known about Chandrayaan 5 at the moment other than its core goal of demonstrating survival against frigid lunar nights. However, Chandrayaan 3 had another trick up its sleeve that will let ISRO ideate on Chandrayaan 5 sooner rather than later. The Times of India confirmed last year that there are two 1-watt radioisotope heater units (RHUs) on the Chandrayaan 3 propulsion module. ISRO hadn’t previously announced their presence. The mission’s Project Director P. Veeramuthuvel said the RHUs couldn’t be installed on the lander and rover for their lunar night survival due to mass constraints. The RHUs, made in collaboration with the Bhabha Atomic Research Center, are based on the radioactive source of Americium-241. The Indian space agency’s foray into operational RHUs is a great sign as it’s precisely the technology that has enabled China to have its Chang’e 4 lander and rover wake up after cold lunar nights.
ISRO to contribute to the NASA-led lunar Gateway space station
A slide showing major ambitious programs India is planning to ultimately enable a crewed lunar vehicle. Graphic: ISRO.
The second Indo-US collaboration meeting of the “initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology” (iCET) was held in New Delhi on June 17. As per its US White House briefing, NASA and ISRO are exploring opportunities for India to participate in the upcoming NASA-led Gateway lunar orbital habitat.
While the briefing didn’t specify the nature of India’s contributions, ISRO’s aforementioned notional roadmap for Chandrayaan and Gaganyaan missions shows a crewed Gaganyaan “lunar cruiser” craft that can dock with the Gateway (something I had predicted!). In a recent Indian space industry meet, ISRO Chief Somanath once again displayed the same roadmap on a slide while another slide showed the name “Gaganyaan-C”, with a subtitle that read “Lunar Fly By, Lunar landing, Return”.
More rocket oomph needed
Liftoff of the Moonbound Chandrayaan 3 by an LVM3 rocket. Image: ISRO.
While India is the third nation this century to have announced the goal of sending a human to the Moon by itself, thereby bringing along a complex set of precursor missions, the country (again) doesn’t have the kind of resources that the US and China do. Big rockets are indispensable if India is to undertake such ambitious missions but the truth is Chandrayaan 3 alone filled LVM3’s payload capacity to the brim.
However, ISRO has begun taking its first steps towards increasing its mass to orbit capabilities. The agency is in the process of testing an engine upgrade to LVM3’s core stage, which would replace the existing two Vikas engines with an indigenously built 2000 KiloNewton semi-cryogenic kerolox engine called SCE-200. This will increase the rocket’s GTO capacity from ~4,000 kilograms to at least ~6,000. ISRO is also testing engine restart capability for LVM3’s upper stage cryogenic engine to enable more complex mission profiles. At the India Space Congress 2024 in New Delhi late June, the Director of ISRO’s Liquid Propulsion Space Center (LPSC), V. Narayanan, said that the target to launch an SCE-200 on an LVM3 is 2027, a point in time later than originally expected but still early enough to be leveraged by the upcoming complex Chandrayaan and initial Gaganyaan missions.
ISRO knows that even the semi-cryogenic LVM3 is a stopgap solution for its bigger ambitions, and so the agency has begun developing a partially reusable Next Generation Launch Vehicle (NGLV), which will have an expendable GTO capability of 10,000 kilograms. Heavier variants of the methalox-powered NGLV will follow to further increase mass to orbit.
As Chethan Kumar reported in March, the NGLV project has gotten a formal project team, and ISRO expects the rocket to take about a decade to launch. This leaves the semi-cryogenic LVM3 to muster more than would be usual for a rocket of its lift capacity. But it’s also partly why ISRO recently announced ramping up LVM3’s production from the current rate of two a year to four and then six.
Aside: India’s planetary missions follow the fundamental ISRO principle of indigenous launches and self-sufficient missions as much as possible, and so ISRO using a foreign launcher like, say, the SpaceX Falcon 9 for such missions is not on the table unless absolutely needed.
More Chandrayaan!
- My blog now has a dedicated page for my ongoing exhaustive coverage of ISRO’s Chandrayaan Moon missions. From the big to the small, I love to track it all.
- ISRO is organizing a hackathon for students and early career researchers to work on problems that will directly contribute to India’s new space missions, including Chandrayaan. The hackathon challenges include automatic crater & boulder detection from Chandrayaan orbital imagery, identifying safe rover navigation routes based on lander imagery, auto-classification of spectral data from lunar orbit, and more!
Me giving a talk titled “From Chandrayaan 3 to an Indian on the Moon” at the India Space Congress 2024. Image: Event team.
I don’t prefer speaking at events because it’s an inefficient medium across the board, especially when an article on a blog can serve everyone better long-term. But if you could see how much I enjoy writing my Moon Monday blog+newsletter, it would be something like this image.
Moon Monday #183 and Indian Space Progress #17: The one where Chandrayaan and Gaganyaan converge
Indian space debris that washed up at Green Head to be housed at Scitech
By Jake Dietsch
The West Australian
Fri, 19 July 2024 2:30PM
Minister Dawson is pictured with John Chappell from Scitech. (Credit: Ian Munro/The West Australian)
A piece of Indian space junk that crashed to Earth and spent years in the Indian Ocean before washing ashore at Green Head will be displayed in the Scitech Planetarium in West Perth.
The 500kg tank was jettisoned from the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle once its rocket fuel was used.
The rocket tank when it washed up onto a beach in Western Australia a year ago.
It’s not known which launch mission the tank was from, but authorities estimated it had been in the Indian Ocean for years before being found at Green Head Beach, about 30 km north of Jurien Bay, in July last year.
As part of a $1 million increase in State funding to Scitech, the debris will soon be on display at the museum’s Planetarium foyer, free of charge.
The funding will also go towards regional visits, a Science on a Sphere exhibit exploring the solar system, and the relaunch of the Banksia Woodlands installation.
Science Minister Stephen Dawson said the debris was allowed to stay in Perth following discussions between Australian and Indian space authorities.
It is understood that Indian space researchers were not interested in retrieving the debris because transporting it back to the subcontinent was too expensive.
Communities around Green Head had hoped the piece would stay locally as a tourist attraction, but the Government ultimately decided Scitech was the best spot.
“We wanted to make sure that as many Western Australians as possible could see it, understand it, learn about its journey, and hopefully get an interest sparked in science as a result,” Mr. Dawson said.
A mysterious object has washed up on South Bay in Green Head over the weekend. Communities around Green Head had hoped the piece would stay locally as a tourist attraction, but the Government ultimately decided Scitech was the best spot. Credit: Kelsey Reid/The West Australian
The minister said the space junk might get a new name via a public competition.
Scitech CEO John Chappell said the debris told a story about space and ocean currents.
“There’s a whole range of different science that we can inspire our kids and big kids and families with as well,” Mr. Chappell said.
“It’s a privilege to be able to allow the community to come and see this impressive object for themselves and learn about the role it played in sending a rocket into space and its journey back to Earth.”
Mr Chappell said inspiring the next generation to take a keen interest in science was important because many future jobs relied on STEM skills.
Science Minister Stephen Dawson announces a million-dollar Government funding package which will contribute towards a new landing pad for the space debris that was found near Green Head. Minister Dawson is pictured with John Chappell from Scitech. Science Minister Stephen Dawson announces a million-dollar Government funding package which will contribute towards a new landing pad for the space debris that was found near Green Head. Minister Dawson is pictured with John Chappell from Scitech.
REVEALED: Fate of Indian space junk that washed up in WA
ISRO conducts flight experiment of Air Breathing Propulsion System
July 22, 2024
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully carried out the second experimental flight for the demonstration of Air Breathing Propulsion Technology at 07:00 am today. The Propulsion systems were symmetrically mounted on either side of a RH-560 Sounding rocket and launched from Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota. The flight test achieved satisfactory performance of the Sounding Rocket along with successful ignition of the Air Breathing propulsion systems. Nearly 110 parameters were monitored during the flight to assess its performance. The flight data from the mission will be useful for the next phase of development of Air Breathing Propulsion systems. Prior to the mission, multiple ground tests were carried out at the various ISRO Centres including Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC) & ISRO Propulsion Complex (IPRC) and also at the CSIR -National Aerospace Laboratories (CSIR-NAL), Bengaluru.
RH-560 is a two-stage, solid motor based sub-orbital rocket that is designed to be utilized as a cost-effective flying test bed for the demonstration of advanced technologies. It is the heaviest sounding rocket in the ISRO’s family of sounding rockets and is launched from Sriharikota.
ISRO conducts flight experiment of Air Breathing Propulsion System
NASA’s Work on NISAR’s Antenna Reflector Nears Completion
By Naomi Hartono
Posted onJuly 29, 2024
NASA’s work on the radar antenna reflector for the NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite is nearing completion in California, with testing under way to verify that this hardware component will deploy properly following launch. Drum-shaped and about 39 feet (12 meters) across, the reflector is among NASA’s contributions to this joint mission with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The reflector is designed to transmit and receive microwave signals to and from Earth’s surface, enabling NISAR to scan nearly all the planet’s land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days to collect science data.
In March, the reflector was transported back from India to a specialized facility in California, where reflective tape was applied and other precautionary measures were taken to mitigate temperature increases that could have potentially affected the deployment of the reflector from its stowed configuration before beginning science operations.
Following the successful completion of testing, NASA will transport the reflector to an ISRO facility in the city of Bengaluru, India, where it will be reintegrated with the radar system by teams from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and ISRO. During this time, a launch readiness date will be determined by ISRO, in coordination with NASA.
The NISAR launch cannot occur between early October 2024 and early February 2025, because that launch window would put the satellite into periods of alternating sunlight and shadows due to the position of the Sun. The resulting temperature fluctuations could affect the deployment of NISAR’s boom and radar antenna reflector.
NASA’s Work on NISAR’s Antenna Reflector Nears Completion – NASA-ISRO SAR Mission (NISAR)
By Naomi Hartono
Posted onJuly 29, 2024
This artist’s concept depicts the NISAR satellite in orbit over central and Northern California. Short for NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar, NISAR is a joint mission of NASA and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
NASA’s work on the radar antenna reflector for the NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite is nearing completion in California, with testing under way to verify that this hardware component will deploy properly following launch. Drum-shaped and about 39 feet (12 meters) across, the reflector is among NASA’s contributions to this joint mission with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The reflector is designed to transmit and receive microwave signals to and from Earth’s surface, enabling NISAR to scan nearly all the planet’s land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days to collect science data.
In March, the reflector was transported back from India to a specialized facility in California, where reflective tape was applied and other precautionary measures were taken to mitigate temperature increases that could have potentially affected the deployment of the reflector from its stowed configuration before beginning science operations.
Following the successful completion of testing, NASA will transport the reflector to an ISRO facility in the city of Bengaluru, India, where it will be reintegrated with the radar system by teams from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and ISRO. During this time, a launch readiness date will be determined by ISRO, in coordination with NASA.
The NISAR launch cannot occur between early October 2024 and early February 2025, because that launch window would put the satellite into periods of alternating sunlight and shadows due to the position of the Sun. The resulting temperature fluctuations could affect the deployment of NISAR’s boom and radar antenna reflector.
NASA’s Work on NISAR’s Antenna Reflector Nears Completion – NASA-ISRO SAR Mission (NISAR)
2nd stage of GSLV Mk-2 being assembled at SDSC-SHAR. This will probably be used in F15 that will carry a 2nd gen GPS satellite NVS-02:
SSLV has been declared operational after the successful launch today.
Some photos from the launch event:
Some photos from the launch event:
I was thinking about this too. SSLV's 2nd & 3rd stages produce nearly the same levels of thrust as the LGM-30 Minuteman 3 ICBM. The 1st stage of the SSLV produces more than 3 times the power of the Minuteman 3's 1st stage. Replace the 1st stage with a smaller solid motor & you have got yourself an ICBM.
I was referring to its satellite launch capacity in a denied environment. They claim to get it running within 72-24 hours. They probably plan to keep pre-fabricated parts in storage for future use.
But yeah, it's useful as a jugaad ICBM too.