ISRO invites international entries for 2032 Venus mission

New Delhi : The Indian Space Research Organisation ( ISRO) invites foreign experiments for its upcoming 2023 Venus mission. The organisation has made an announcement of opportunity (AO) to the international space community to submit their scientific payloads to be carried on the mission.

International scientists and researchers from various space agencies, research laboratories, academic institutions and universities may participate in space-based experiments to know more about Venus. 

ISRO in its announcement posted, " “Proposals are solicited from the international scientific community for novel space-based experiments to study specific areas of science interest on Venus. This AO has a specific objective to identify important science experiments that strengthen/complements overall science from the suite of pre-selected  proposals from India on ISRO’s Venus mission.”

Participants may be involved in planetary exploration studies, the development of science instruments for space, and willing to develop space-worthy experiments, besides having access to associated facilities for test and instrument calibration

ISRO will accept entries until midnight (IST) of December 20, 2018. The organisation mentioned it has identified broad research interests in Venus, which include researching the planet’s surface/sub surface features and re-surfacing processes; its atmospheric chemistry, dynamics and composition variations; and interaction with solar radiation/solar wind. 

Sources confirmed that the payload capacity of the proposed satellite to be launched by ISRO is likely to be about 100 kg with 500W of power. 

The satellite’s proposed highly inclined orbit around Venus is expected to be around 500 Km X 60,000 km, which is likely to be reduced gradually, over several months to a lessen the satellite’s farthest point from Venus while in an elliptical orbit, depending on the final spacecraft configuration. 

Expected payloads from India are:

S-Band synthetic aperture radar (SAR)  

Advanced radar for topside ionosphere and subsurface sounding 

Ultraviolet (UV) imaging spectroscopy telescope 

Thermal camera 

Cloud monitoring camera 

Venus atmospheric spectro polarimeter

Airglow photometer 

Radio occultation experiment 

Ionospheric electron temperature analyser 

Retarding potential analyser  

Mass spectrometer 

Plasma wave detector