Chandrayaan-1 was India's first lunar space probe and it found water on the Moon. It mapped the Moon in infrared, visible, and X-ray light from lunar orbit and used reflected radiation to prospect for several elements, minerals, and ice. It operated from 2008 to 2009.
A Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) launched the 590-kg (1,300-pound) Chandrayaan-1 on October 22,
2008, from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on Sriharikota Island, Andhra Pradesh state. The probe then
was boosted into an elliptical polar orbit around the Moon, 504 km (312 miles) high at its closest to
the lunar surface and 7,502 km (4,651 miles) at its farthest. After checkout, it descended to a 100-km
(60-mile) orbit. On November 14, 2008, Chandrayaan-1 launched a small craft, the Moon Impact Probe
(MIP), that was designed to test systems for future landings and study the thin lunar atmosphere before
crashing on the Moon’s surface. MIP impacted near the south pole, but, before it crashed, it discovered
small amounts of water in the Moon’s atmosphere.
The estimated cost for the project was ₹386 crore (US$51 million). It was intended to survey the lunar
surface over a two-year period, to produce a complete map of the chemical composition at the surface and
three-dimensional topography. The polar regions are of special interest as they might contain water
ice.Among its many achievements was the discovery of widespread presence of water molecules in lunar
soil.
After almost a year, the orbiter started suffering from several technical issues including failure of
the star tracker and poor thermal shielding; Chandrayaan-1 stopped communicating at about 20:00 UTC on
28 August 2009, shortly after which the ISRO officially declared that the mission was over.
Chandrayaan-1 operated for 312 days as opposed to the intended two years, but the mission achieved most
of its scientific objectives
Isro's Mangalyaan is the first successful Mars Orbiter mission. India is the fourth country to accomplish this feat and the first to do so on its very first attempt. The Mars Probe was inserted into the orbit of Mars after a transit for 298 days, that is, on September 24, 2014. A total of 454 Crore was spent on the project, making it the cheapest mission to Mars ever.
The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), also called Mangalyaan ("Mars-craft", from mangala, "Mars" and yāna,
"craft, vehicle"), is a space probe orbiting Mars since 24 September 2014. It was launched on 5 November
2013 by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). It is India's first interplanetary mission and it
made it the fourth space agency to achieve Mars orbit, after Roscosmos, NASA, and the European Space
Agency. It made India the first Asian nation to reach Martian orbit and the first nation in the world to
do so on its maiden attempt.
The Mars Orbiter Mission probe lifted-off from the First Launch Pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre
(Sriharikota Range SHAR), Andhra Pradesh, using a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) rocket C25 at
09:08 UTC on 5 November 2013. The launch window was approximately 20 days long and started on 28 October
2013. The MOM probe spent about a month in Earth orbit, where it made a series of seven apogee-raising
orbital manoeuvres before trans-Mars injection on 30 November 2013 (UTC). After a 298-day transit to
Mars, it was put into Mars orbit on 24 September 2014.
The mission is a "technology demonstrator" project to develop the technologies for designing, planning,
management, and operations of an interplanetary mission. It carries five scientific instruments. The
spacecraft is currently being monitored from the Spacecraft Control Centre at ISRO Telemetry, Tracking
and Command Network (ISTRAC) in Bengaluru with support from the Indian Deep Space Network (IDSN)
antennae at Bengaluru, Karnataka.
The Astrosat satellite is a dedicated mission of ISRO on Astronomy. It will observe celestial sources simultaneously in X-Ray, Optical and UV Spectral bands. The Astrosat satellite was launched from Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh. The satellite was launched using the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) C-30. The satellite was placed into an orbit of 650 Km. The mission was planned for a period of 5 years.
After the success of the satellite-borne Indian X-ray Astronomy Experiment (IXAE), which was launched in
1996, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) approved further development for a full-fledged
astronomy satellite, Astrosat, in 2004.
A number of astronomy research institutions in India, and abroad have jointly built instruments for the
satellite. Important areas requiring coverage include studies of astrophysical objects ranging from
nearby Solar System objects to distant stars and objects at cosmological distances; timing studies of
variables ranging from pulsations of hot white dwarfs to those of active galactic nuclei can be
conducted with Astrosat as well, with time scales ranging from milliseconds to days.
Astrosat is a multi-wavelength astronomy mission on an IRS-class satellite into a near-Earth, equatorial
orbit. The five instruments on board cover the visible (320–530 nm), near UV (180–300 nm), far UV
(130–180 nm), soft X-ray (0.3–8 keV and 2–10 keV) and hard X-ray (3–80 keV and 10–150 keV) regions of
the electromagnetic spectrum.
Aditya L1 is an Indian coronagraphy spacecraft currently being designed and built by ISRO and various other Indian research institutes. It will study the solar atmosphere through a halo orbit in its L1 point between Earth and the Sun. During the mission, the spacecraft will monitor solar radiation, coronal heating, solar wind acceleration, and coronal magnetometry, as well as continuously observe the Sun's photosphere, chromosphere, and corona, as well as solar energetic particles and its magnetic field.
The Aditya-L1 mission will take around 109 Earth days after launch to reach the halo orbit around the L1
point, which is about 1,500,000 km (930,000 mi) from Earth. The 1,500 kg (3,300 lb) satellite carries
seven science payloads with diverse objectives, including but not limited to, the coronal heating, solar
wind acceleration, coronal magnetometry, origin and monitoring of near-UV solar radiation (which drives
Earth's upper atmospheric dynamics and global climate), coupling of the solar photosphere to
chromosphere and corona, in-situ characterisations of the space environment around Earth by measuring
energetic particle fluxes and magnetic fields of the solar wind and solar magnetic storms that have
adverse effects on space and ground-based technologies.
Aditya-L1 will be able to provide observations of Sun's photosphere, chromosphere and corona. In
addition, an instrument will study the solar energetic particles' flux reaching the L1 orbit, while a
magnetometer payload will measure the variation in magnetic field strength at the halo orbit around L1.
These payloads have to be placed outside the interference from the Earth's magnetic field and hence
could not have been useful in the low Earth orbit as proposed on the original Aditya mission concept.
One of the major unsolved issues in the field of solar physics is that the upper atmosphere of the Sun
is 1,000,000 K (1,000,000 °C; 1,800,000 °F) hot whereas the lower atmosphere is just 6,000 K (5,730 °C;
10,340 °F). In addition, it is not understood how exactly the Sun's radiation affects the dynamics of
the Earth's atmosphere on shorter as well as on longer time scale. The mission will obtain near
simultaneous images of the different layers of the Sun's atmosphere, which reveal the ways in which the
energy may be channeled and transferred from one layer to another. Thus the Aditya-L1 mission will
enable a comprehensive understanding of the dynamical processes of the Sun and address some of the
outstanding problems in solar physics and heliophysics.
Shukrayaan-1 is an orbiter proposed by ISRO to study Venus's surface and atmosphere. Depending on its final configuration, it is expected to be able to carry approximately 100 kilograms (220 lbs) of science payload and generate 500 watts of power.Initially, Venus will orbit at a distance of 500 kilometers (310 miles) at periapsis and 60,000 kilometers (37,000 miles) at apoapsis.
The three broad research areas of interest for this mission include surface/subsurface stratigraphy and
re-surfacing processes; second: study the atmospheric chemistry, dynamics and compositional variations,
and third: study of solar irradiance and solar wind interaction with Venus ionosphere while studying the
structure, composition and dynamics of the atmosphere.
The space agencies of India (ISRO) and France (CNES) were holding in 2018 discussions to collaborate on
this mission and jointly develop autonomous navigation and aerobraking technologies. In addition, French
astrophysicist Jacques Blamont, with his experience from the Vega program, expressed his interest to U R
Rao to use inflated balloons to help study the Venusian atmosphere. Just like during the Vega missions,
these instrumented balloons could be deployed from an orbiter and take prolonged observations while
floating in the relatively mild upper atmosphere of the planet. ISRO agreed to consider the proposal to
use a balloon probe carrying 10 kilograms (22 lb) payload to study the Venusian atmosphere at 55
kilometres (34 mi) altitude.
Recently ISRO has shortlisted 20 international proposals that include collaboration with Russia, France,
Sweden and Germany.