Indian rocket to land on moon in 2017, solar mission planned for 2019

New Delhi: India’s second lunar probe, Chandrayaan II, will land on the moon in 2017 and the country’s first solar mission Aditya L1 is likely to be launched in 2019, the Lok Sabha was informed on Wednesday.

Chandrayaan II will land on the surface of the moon in 2017 and this second lunar mission will help explore the possibilities of signs of extraterrestrial life, Minister of State in Prime Minister’s Office Jitendra Singh said during Question Hour, responding to supplementaries.

The Aditya L1 mission “is aimed at studying the sun from an orbit around the sun-earth lagrangian point (L-1) which is about 1.5 million kilometres from earth. It will carry seven payloads including a coronagraph to observe the outermost layers of the sun, the corona. Aditya L1 will be launched during 2019-20 time frame,” he said in his written response.

The “approved cost” of the solar mission is Rs3.78 billion (Dh208 million.

Meanwhile, India on Wednesday launched six Singaporean satellites with its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle’s core alone (PSLV-CA) variant.

The PSLV rocket — standing 44.4 metres tall and weighing around 227 tonnes — took off from the rocket port in Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, around 80km from Chennai. It rose into the evening skies with fierce orange flames at its tail.

Apart from launching the six foreign satellites, Isro also tested the rocket’s fourth stage/engine’s ability to restart after it was cut off around 17 minutes into the flight.

Technically speaking, India was testing a multiple burn fuel stage/rocket engine for the first time.

“The restart and shut off of the fourth stage engine is done as a first step towards launching multiple satellites but in different orbits,” an Isro official said on condition of anonymity.

Launching of multiple satellites with a single rocket is nothing new for Isro and it has been doing that for several years. The challenge is, however, to launch several satellites at different orbits with one rocket.

This is what Isro plans to test when the PSLV ejects the six Singaporean satellites.