ISRO 2020 Missions Include Aditya, Gaganyaan Test-Flight: Report

The year 2020 will hold a list of new missions for the Indian Space Research Organization. The premier space agency is gearing up to launch a couple of space missions and satellites. The list includes the ambitious Aditya mission to the Sun, the manned test flight for the Gaganyaan mission, and more.

ISRO 2020 Missions Includes Aditya

The Times of India reports that ISRO Chairman K. Sivan said that the agency is planning to launch more than 10 satellites in 2020. The list includes Gisat-1 and Gisat-2 that are advanced communication satellites. Additionally, the Earth observation satellites Risat 2BR2 and Microsat for surveillance will also be launched.

"We are also targeting to launch Aditya L1 (sun) mission by mid-2020 and the first unmanned test-flight of Gaganyaan in December," the chairman said. The Aditya mission is India's first mission to explore the Sun and will study the solar corona. A 400 kg PSLV satellite will be used to carry the spacecraft.

The satellite will carry six scientific payloads that will be inserted in a halo orbit around the Lagrangian point 1 (L1), which is 1.5 million km from the Earth. This poses a major advantage for ISRO as the Sun can be studied without any eclipse.

ISRO Includes First Ganagyaan Test-Flight

The coming year will also see ISRO launching the first test flight of the Gangayaan mission. The Rs. 10,000 crores mission aboard the GSLV MKIII will carry a humanoid to space, which will act as a case study for the actual flight mission in December 2021. The final mission will have three astronauts sent to space for five-seven days for various galactic experiments.

Plus, the space agency will also be testing the reusable launch vehicle or RLV. The first deployment of the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) will also be launched in 2020. The RLV rockets will play a pivotal role in cutting down costs and carry heavy payloads for ISRO. The RLV technology will reuse the first and second stages of a rocket.

The first rocket stage recovery will have a vertical landing spot on the sea, similar to Elon Musk's SpaceX. The second stage recovery will have a winged body, similar to a space shuttle that will glide back to the Earth and land on an airstrip. It looks like ISRO is determined to achieve these missions, but we can only wait and see how many of these will be successful.