ISRO Eyeing Maiden Visit To Venus, Revisit To Mars And A World Record

India is training its sights on a visit to Venus and a revisit to Mars, with this bold initiative having found a place in this year’s Union Budget that saw a 23 per cent increase in funding allocation towards space research.

The Mars Orbiter Mission II, likely to be in 2021-2022, may involve putting a robot on the surface of the Red Planet. India's maiden mission to Venus is in all probability going to be a modest orbiter mission. While Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) first Mars Orbiter Mission was an entirely indigenous programme, the second one may witness a tie-up between India and France.

While on a visit to India, Michael M Watkins, director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), United States, stated that NASA would definitely be willing to partner with India in its mission to Venus as it is a planet that is little understood. ISRO and NASA have already initiated talks this month on trying to jointly undertake studies on using electrical propulsion for powering this mission.

The news of the inter-planetary journey comes as ISRO is gearing up to put 104 satellites into orbit in a single launch on 15 February using its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). And in this process it will break a record set by Russia in 2014 when it placed 37 satellites in the orbit with a single launch.

Out of the 104 satellites, three will be Indian and the remaining will be smaller foreign satellites. This launch will put India in a position that has never been achieved by any nation till now as no country has attempted to launch 100 satellites in a single attempt so far.