Aug 23, 2024
By: Kapil Yadav
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Today, August 23, 2024, India celebrates its first National Space Day, marking one year since the historic landing of Chandrayaan-3's Vikram Lander on the Moon's South Pole. Let's take a look back at India's remarkable journey into space.
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India’s first prime minister Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru, established The Indian National Committee for Space Research (INCOSPAR) in 1962, under the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE). INCOSPAR was meant to develop India’s space programmes and infrastructure.
INCOSPAR was renamed ISRO in 1969, under the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE).
Designed and fabricated in India and launched by a Soviet Kosmos-3M rocket, Aryabhata became India’s first satellite. Launched in 1975, it was named after the famous Indian astronomer and mathematician, Aryabhata.
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After the milestone of launching Aryabhata India for the first time in 1980 launched Rohini Satellite 1 or RS-1, which became the first satellite successfully launched by India using indigenously developed rockets.
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Launched on March 17, 1988, from the Soviet Cosmodrome at Baikonur, Kazakhstan, the Indian Remote Sensing Satellite-1A (IRS-1A) was the first of a series of indigenous remote sensing satellites developed by India.
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Considered a partial failure because due to not being placed into the desired orbit, PSLV-C1 was the fourth mission of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle. It carried IRS-1D, planned to be deployed in the Sun-synchronous orbit.
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India’s first mission to the moon, Chandrayaan 1 was launched from Sriharikota, on October 22, 2008. The spacecraft orbited the moon at a height of 100 km, with the goal of finding chemical, mineralogical and photo-geologic mapping of the Moon.
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India made history by successfully launching its first interplanetary mission to Mars on November 05, 2013. This made ISRO the fourth agency in the history of the world to successfully send a spacecraft to the orbit of Mars.
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A highly complex mission due to the presence of an Orbiter, Lander and Rover, Chandrayaan 2 was launched to explore the unexplored South Pole of the Moon.
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This is a crucial project in India’s journey to the exploration of outer space. Project Gaganyaan plans on demonstrating India’s capacity of human spaceflight capability by launching a crew of 3 members to an orbit of 400 km for a 3-day mission and bringing them back safely to earth.
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A follow-on mission to Chandrayaan-2, India launched Chandrayaan 3 to demonstrate and enhance the landing and roving on the lunar surface. This mission is also focused on doing experiments using the instruments on the Vikram lander.
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