Shukrayaan Mission

Shukrayaan Mission

Subject :Science and Technology

Section : Space and Technology

Concept :

• An advisor to the space science programme recently said that the Indian Space Research Organisation is yet to receive approval from the Indian government for the Venus mission and that the mission could as a result be postponed to 2031.

About Shukrayaan-1

• It is also called the Venus Mission.
• The Shukrayaan I mission will be an orbiter mission.
• Its scientific payloads currently include a high-resolution synthetic aperture radar and a ground-penetrating radar.
• The mission is expected to study Venus’s geological and volcanic activity, emissions on the ground, wind speed, cloud cover, and other planetary characteristics from an elliptical orbit.
• Optimal launch windows from Earth to Venus occur once every 19 months.

Key facts about Venus

• Venus is often called “Earth’s twin” because they’re similar in size and structure, but Venus has extreme surface heat and a dense, toxic atmosphere.
• It rotates very slowly on its axis – one day on Venus lasts 243 Earth days.
• The thick atmosphere of Venus traps heat creating a runaway greenhouse effect – making it the hottest planet in our solar system.
• Phosphine, a possible indicator of microbial life, has been observed in the clouds of Venus.
• Unlike the other planets in our solar system, Venus spins clockwise on its axis.

Other Venus Mission

VERITAS:

NASA’s VERITAS, or Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, and Spectroscopy, will be the first NASA spacecraft to explore Venus since the 1990s. The spacecraft will launch no earlier than December 2027. It will orbit Venus, gathering data to reveal how the paths of Venus and Earth diverged, and how Venus lost its potential to be a habitable world.VERITAS will be the first NASA spacecraft to explore Earth’s sister planet Venus since the 1990s. The spacecraft will discover the secrets of a lost habitable world on Venus, gathering data to reveal how the paths of Venus and Earth diverged.

DAVINCI:

NASA’s DAVINCI mission will launch in the late 2020s. After exploring the top of Venus’s atmosphere, DAVINCI will drop a probe to the surface. On its hour-long descent, the probe will take thousands of measurements and snap up-close images of the surface. The probe may not survive the landing, but if it does, it could provide several minutes of bonus science.

EnVision:

The European Space Agencyhas selected EnVision to make detailed observations of Venus. As a key partner in the mission, NASA is providing the Synthetic Aperture Radar, called VenSAR, to make high-resolution measurements of the planet’s surface features.

Previous missions to Venus 

• Magellan –  NASAmission , 1994.
• Venus Express– European mission
• Akatsuki– Japanese mission