Tracking and contextualizing India’s increasingly relevant capabilities in civil space exploration.
ISRO Chandrayaan
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
Indian Space
Also in this special edition: ISRO’s ambitions to fetch samples from the Moon, build a space station, and develop a heavy-lift rocket!
Japan and Selene
You can now follow my articles on some non-questionable social networks that also federate (interoperate): Flipboard, Mastodon and Bluesky. The hunt for water on the Moon continues US researchers find that permanently shadowed regions up to 77° latitude—which is outside the Moon’s south pole—could host surface and
Moon Monday
This week’s Moon Monday has not one but two feature stories! So much has been happening in lunar exploration this whole year that I’ve transitioned to writing deep dives more frequently so as to adequately capture and contextualize big updates. If you appreciate my efforts to bring you
Indian Space
A nimble new launch(er) On August 16, ISRO launched its smallest and newest rocket SSLV, which successfully placed the agency’s 175-kilogram EOS-08 Earth observation satellite into its intended 475-kilometer circular orbit. The satellite carries a number of novel technological components as well as an innovative remote sensing method
Moon Monday
Grab some tea, coffee, or beverage of your choice because this week’s Moon Monday is a sci-tech deep dive! 🌝 Chandrayaan 3 contributes to learning our Moon’s origin and evolution The first ever ground-based measurements of high-latitude lunar soil and rocks made by the Chandrayaan 3 rover’s Alpha
Indian Space
I hope you enjoy this bird’s-eye view of all major developments in India’s space trajectory over the last two months! 🚀 India’s space budget for FY2024 Despite the many highs of 2023 for Indian space, the FY2024 budget of $1.56 billion for the country’s Department of
Moon Monday
How will ISRO go from Chandrayaan 3 to an Indian on the Moon? Clarifying and laying down India’s plans for increasingly complex robotic lunar missions, where human spaceflight comes in, and what realistic timelines look like.
Articles
Today (June 14), Srinivasa Hegde, Mission Director of India’s first lunar orbiter Chandrayaan 1, passed away. Among its many unique feats, Chandrayaan 1 discovered water on the Moon, which encouraged many nations worldwide to explore our cosmic neighbor, and also catalyzed NASA—a key partner on the mission—to
Indian Space
I’m thrilled to welcome PierSight as the latest sponsor of my monthly Indian Space Progress blog+newsletter! 🚀 Ahmedabad-based PierSight Space, which raised $6 million recently and also won the INDUS-X challenge for oil spill detections, aims to build a constellation of synthetic aperture radar satellites for persistent ocean monitoring.
Japan and Selene
In this month’s Indian Space Progress edition, I want to highlight how increasing independence in being able to plan and execute planetary missions can lead to uniquely impactful collaborations between organizations globally. India’s Chandrayaan program has been becoming incrementally indigenous, and the two stories below highlight its utility
Indian Space
An update about the last Indian Space Progress edition before we begin this one: My review of India’s Gaganyaan mission to send astronauts to space has been republished on Jeff Foust’s revered community blog The Space Review! ^_^ How ISRO is building a reusable spaceplane Almost a year after
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