ISRO gears up for a busy 2023 calendar year

Chennai The calendar year 2023 is a busy one for the Indian space agency launching rockets and satellites as well as testing various systems to power future rockets for its human space mission.

While the first half of 2023 saw four rocket launches carrying Indian and foreign satellites, the second half began with the Chandrayaan-3 mission with several others in the pipeline.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is gearing up for a commercial launch - carrying third party satellites to orbit for a fee - with its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) later this month.

The Indian rocket will carry the Singaporean DS-SAR satellite weighing about 360 kg, along with six other small satellites - VELOX-AM, ARCADE, SCOOB-II, NuLIoN, Galassia-2 and ORB-12 STRIDER. Following that will be another interplanetary mission. And this time the Sun Mission.

The SRO will be sending up its Aditya L1, a coronagraphy satellite, on a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle rocket to study the solar atmosphere towards the end of August.

According to ISRO, the spacecraft will be placed into a halo orbit around the first Lagrange point, L1, of the Sun-Earth system.

The satellite around the L1 point has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without occultation/eclipses.

The Aditya L1 mission is slated to happen a couple of days after ISRO attempts to land on the lunar soil its lander that is being carried by the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft.