Indian Space - Jatan’s Space

Indian Space Progress

Was Shukla’s Axiom-4 flight to the International Space Station worth it for ISRO? | Indian Space Progress #29

A complicated question to answer for a controversial flight intended to advance India’s grand ambition of indigenously sending humans to space.

Indian Space Progress

A pressing PSLV rocket failure and orbital congestion to brood over | Indian Space Progress #28

Plus more mission updates.

Moon Monday

Moon Monday #224: A curious find from Chandrayaan 3, Artemis updates, and more

Two announcements before we begin: 1. I’m honored to be moderating a fantastic panel on modern themes in global lunar exploration at the international Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX) on Friday, May 9. If you’re attending GLEX in New Delhi, join us for the session. And, if you’

Indian Space Progress

Indian Space Progress #27: Three months of mission updates, and fixing ISRO’s monthly summaries

ISRO has been publishing monthly summaries of the varied activities and programs of India’s Department of Space (DOS) for years. Lately though, there have been consistent delays in publishing them by a month or two, and sometimes even more. The summaries have been trimmed too, now conveying less than

Moon Monday

Moon Monday #220: Lunar science galore from the Chandrayaans

Plus mission updates and some tangents.

Indian Space Progress

Newly approved Chandrayaan 5 LUPEX mission will drill for water on the Moon and aid Artemis | Indian Space Progress #25-26

Plus: A host of new lunar science results from Chandrayaan 2 and 3. Enjoy this 3200-word Chandrayaan-special. 🌙

Moon Monday

Moon Monday #219: Results from India’s Chandrayaan 3 experiment to benefit future missions eyeing lunar water

👀 🧊 🌘

Indian Space Progress

Indian Space Progress #24: High on docking, low on navigation. Cool new projects, same old budget

This edition marks two years of publishing the monthly Indian Space Progress blog+newsletter. I started it with the goal of trying to compile, capture, and globally contextualize true trajectories of India’s evolving (civil) space capabilities. More than 7500 of you subscribers spread across the globe have found it

Indian Space

ISRO provided ground tracking support for Intuitive Machines’ NASA CLPS Moon landing

Last week I wrote how the annual report of NSIL, an Indian government arm tasked with commercializing ISRO’s space technologies, notes that ISRO provided commercial ground tracking support for a lunar mission by another country in 2023. For some reason, the NSIL report doesn’t specify the mission name.

Indian Space Progress

Indian Space Progress #23: How ISRO et al. laid the groundwork for a decade this year

I’m delighted to welcome GalaxEye Space as the latest sponsor of my Indian Space Progress blog+newsletter! 🚀 Bangalore-based startup GalaxEye is developing hybrid Earth observation satellites with multi-spectral optical imaging plus synthetic aperture radar (SAR) capabilities, with the first launch targeted next year. 🛰️ While 2023 was an incredible year

Indian Space Progress

Indian Space Progress #22: How Chandrayaan 1, 2 and 3 leveraged their view from the Moon

ISRO’s Chandrayaan craft have viewed a solar eclipse, studied the Sun’s flares, and observed Earth as an exoplanet, all from the vantage point of lunar orbit.

Chandrayaan

Discussing India’s lunar exploration heading with Carnegie India (podcast)

I was a guest on Carnegie India’s podcast Interpreting India. In light of the recently approved Chandrayaan 4 sample return mission, we discuss for a good 45 minutes where India’s Moon exploration plans are heading, and what are the enablers and constraints on the increasingly complex road for