Tag: India

New study using Chandrayaan-2 data again suggests ice in crater near Moon’s south pole

9:06 am

The Moon's south pole region

The uncertainty of science: A new study by scientists in India using data from the Indian lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-2 has once again found evidence strongly suggesting the existence of water ice in several permanently shadowed craters near Moon’s south pole.

The findings are based on observations made by the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter’s Dual Frequency Synthetic Aperture Radar (DFSAR), a sophisticated microwave imaging instrument capable of probing beneath the lunar surface.

Among the craters examined, scientists found particularly strong evidence of subsurface ice in a 1.1-kilometre-wide crater located within the larger Faustini crater near the Moon’s south pole. Researchers said the crater displayed a distinctive “lobate-rim morphology”- a flow-like structural pattern that may indicate the impact event penetrated an ice-rich subsurface layer.

On the map above the green dot to the right of the south pole marks the location of the small crater inside Faustini Crater. Their conclusions were based first on microwave data suggesting subsurface ice, and second on the lobate shape of this crater’s rim, which has a kind blobby look implying the material is muddy and impregnated with ice.

Increasingly the data from all sources seems to suggest that if there is ice in these permanently shadowed craters, it is likely impregnated in the soil, and will require processing to extract.

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The present state of India’s space program

10:44 am

India's Bharatiya Antariksh Station as outlined in 2024
India’s Bharatiya Antariksh Station as outlined in 2024.
Click for original image.

India’s space agency ISRO yesterday released its annual report [pdf], outlining its accomplishments over during 2025.

Like all such reports, it is filled with glowing superlatives. It provides little concrete information about the agency’s more serious issues, such as what it is doing to fix the upper stage of its PSLV rocket, which has failed on the last two consecutive launches. All the annual report says on this subject is the following:

Based on the recommendations of the National Level Committee comprising of eminent experts from academia & industry, the third stage of PSLV i.e., HPS3 motor with modified design was realised and two static tests were successfully completed on October 06, 2025 and November 19, 2025 as in flight, from SDSC, SHAR. The overall performance of the motor and subsystems were as expected and closer to nominal performance.

The problem is that these fixes and tests did not work. The second failure of the upper stage occurred in January 2026, less than two months later. The annual report should have noted this fact, but did not.

As for India’s planetary program, digging out the present schedule from the report is difficult. Based on this review of the annual report, the dates are as follows:

  • Chandrayaan 4 lunar sample return mission: October 2027.
  • Venus Orbiter: March 2028.
  • Chandrayaan 5 /LUPEX lunar lander: September 2028.
  • Mars Lander: No target launch date as yet.

Expect these dates to be delayed.

The report also gives a detailed description on India’s Gaganyaan manned program, but little information about the planned unmanned tests that were planned for this year, leading to a manned orbital mission next year. At the moment the schedule appears to be experiencing delays, caused mostly by the PSLV launch failures. It appears ISRO wants this issue resolved before it launches that first unmanned Gaganyaan test flight.

If you want to get an overview of India’s government space program, this annual report is a good place to start. It will at least provide a baseline on which you can build a deeper knowledge.

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Indian rocket startup Skyroot now shipping its Vikram rocket to launch site

9:54 am

The Indian rocket startup Skyroot has now finished assembling its Vikram-1 rocket, and is about to ship it to its launch site at the Sriharikota spaceport on the east coast of India.

At Sriharikota, the rocket moves into final assembly and a round of system checks before a launch window is locked in the coming months. This is the last stretch before liftoff. Countdown operations, testing and integration now shift fully to the launch site.

One of the company’s founders said the most critical testing has been completed, with launch campaign activities set to begin at the spaceport.

The company is presently targeting a launch in June. If Vikram-1 reaches orbit successfully, Skyroot would become the first Indian private company to design, build, and launch its own rocket, and would be well positioned to win launch contracts from smallsat companies, competing directly with Rocket Lab and its Electron rocket.

This success would also help accelerate the Modi government’s effort to transition from a space industry controlled entirely by its government space agency ISRO to a private industry run by competing indepedent companies.

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India’s space agency: In ’25 it did 20 maneuvers to avoid collisions in space

10:29 am

India's space agency ISRO, as transparent as mud
India’s space agency ISRO.

India’s space agency ISRO today released its annual Space Situational Report, describing the collision possibilities that now exist due to the large increase in orbiting objects. According to this report, in 2025 ISRO did 20 maneuvers to avoid collisions in space.

More than 150,000 alerts issued by the Combined Space Operations Center (CSpOC) of USSPACECOM for ISRO’s Earth orbiting satellites were analysed using more accurate orbital data from operational flight dynamics. There were 4 collision avoidance maneuvers (CAM) for GEO [geosynchronous orbits], while 14 CAMs, including one for NISAR [A NASA/ISRO radar telescope], which is designated as Risk Mitigation Maneuver in NASA terminology, were performed for LEO [low Earth orbiting] satellites. Wherever feasible, collision avoidance requirements were met by adjusting orbit maintenance maneuvers to avoid exclusive CAMs.

In addition, ISRO had to twice shift the orbit of its Chandayaan-2 lunar orbiter because of an orbital conflict with NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).

The report has a lot more interesting details, as ISRO is also trying to increase its ability to track everything in orbit, rather than rely on data from the American military or American commercial tracking companies, which has been the policy in the past.

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A review of India’s government space program suggests it is behind schedule

11:28 am

India's space agency ISRO, as transparent as mud
India’s space agency ISRO.

Link here. The main take-away of the article is that the investigation into the two launch failures of ISRO’s PSLV rocket has stalled everything, including the planned two unmanned orbital test missions of its Gaganyaan capsule, needed before the actual manned mission can fly in early 2027. The first was originally supposed to fly in March, but has been delayed pending completion of the investigation of the PSLV failures.

That investigation however has stalled far more than just Gaganyaan:

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro), which had announced an aggressive manifest of 18 launches for 2026, has so far completed only one in the first four months of the year, and that mission [PSLV] ended in failure.

The article also notes a decline in ISRO’S transparency in recent months, a decline that bodes ill for the agency and its programs. I have noted this as well. When ISRO in February 2026 announced the next PSLV launch for this coming June, it released no information from its investigation of the previous two launch failures. If ISRO knows what went wrong, it wasn’t saying. All it has told us so far is that the cause of the two launch failures was for different reasons.

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India conducts another parachute drop test for its Gaganyaan manned capsule

9:03 am

Gaganyaan drop test
Click to watch video of drop test.

India’s space agency ISRO today successfully completed its second helicopter drop test of a dummy capsule, testing the parachute release system that its Gaganyaan manned capsule will use on return to Earth.

In this test, a simulated Crew Module, weighing about 5.7 tonnes, that is equivalent to the mass of the Crew Module in the first uncrewed Gaganyaan mission (G1), was lifted by an Indian Air Force Chinook helicopter to an altitude of about 3km and released over a designated drop zone in sea, near to Sriharikota coast.

Ten parachutes of four types were deployed in a precise sequence during the descent of the Crew Module, gradually reducing the velocity for safe touchdown. Subsequently, the simulated Crew Module was successfully recovered in coordination with Indian Navy. The IADT-02 test validated the parachute-based deceleration systems in the Crew Module.

The manned mission is presently scheduled for early next year, after a series of unmanned orbital test flights are completed in ’26. This schedule is significantly later than ISRO’s original schedule. When the program was first proposed in 2018, ISRO said the manned mission would happen in 2022.

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India’s space agency requests proposals for building landing legs for its next new rocket

8:59 am

NGLV as proposed in November 2025
NGLV (the two rockets in the middle) as proposed
in November 2025. Click for bigger image.

India’s space agency ISRO has issued a request for bids from the country’s commercial aerospace sector to build landing legs for its next new rocket, dubbed the Next Generation Launch Vehicle (NGLV).

The tender, titled “Fabrication of Landing Leg Hardware with materials for Advanced Development Module for In-situ Reusable Technologies (Admire) VTVL (10 units)”, seeks industry participation in developing critical components for a vertical take-off, vertical landing (VTVL) test vehicle under the ADMIRE programme.

…According to ISRO’s tender documents, the selected vendor will be responsible for end-to-end development, including procurement of raw materials, manufacturing, quality control planning, and final delivery of landing leg hardware. The project has been structured into three distinct phases spanning approximately 12 months.

The NGLV rocket was first approved by the India government in September 2024. Since then ISRO has completed the preliminary design of its methane engine, but has also revised the rocket’s design twice, in October 2024 and again in November 2025. This new landing leg contract suggests the agency hopes to do some test hops of a first stage prototype a year from now.

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India’s second spaceport to be completed next year

9:26 am

The existing and proposed spaceports in India
The existing and proposed spaceports in India

According to officials in India, the nation’s second spaceport at Kulasekarapattinam is on schedule to be completed by next year, when it will become available for polar launches of the SSLV rocket as well as other commercial rocket launches.

India is moving ahead with plans to operationalise a new launch facility at Kulasekarapattinam in Tamil Nadu. It is expected to be commissioned during the 2026–27 financial year, according to information shared in the Lok Sabha by Jitendra Singh.

The new facility, officially called the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) Launch Complex, is being developed as the country’s second space launch site. The Kulasekarapattinam complex will primarily handle launches of SSLV missions to Sun-synchronous Polar Orbit, a trajectory widely used for Earth observation satellites.

The SSLV rocket is at present controlled by India’s space agency ISRO, though there has been an effort by the Modi government to transfer it to the private sector. It is not clear whether that effort has been successful. ISRO and India’s large space bureaucracy has been resistant. There have also been indications that this new spaceport will be made available to the handful of Indian rocket startups that are developing their own rockets.

The Sriharikota spaceport is ISRO’s main launch site. The Hope Island site is a proposed commercial and private spaceport, whose future remains very uncertain.

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Indian rocket startup Agnikul completes static fire test of three-engine cluster

8:59 am

The Indian rocket startup Agnikul has now released a video of a 40-second static fire test of three-engine cluster it hopes to use on its Agnibaan orbital rocket.

The engines, powered by electric motor-driven pumps, were designed and manufactured in-house at Agnikul’s Rocket Factory-1. All three were fully 3D-printed as single-piece hardware units, reflecting the startup’s focus on advanced manufacturing and indigenous engineering.

Co-founder and chief executive Srinath Ravichandran said that increasing the number of engines improves rocket performance and that a three-engine system is required for commercial missions. The clustered test involved calibrating six pumps and six motors and fine-tuning six independent speed control algorithms to function in synchronisation. The goal was to achieve uniform startup, steady-state operation and shutdown performance across all three engines, a technically complex process given the precision required in semi-cryogenic propulsion systems.

The company has completed one suborbital test launch in May 2024, and in September 2025 said its orbital rocket’s first stage will land vertically and be reused.

Agnikul however has not released any schedule for launch, and based on this static fire test appears years from a first launch. It is making progress, but slowly. At the same time, it says it has raised $500 million in private investment capital, giving it the resources to build the rocket.

Based on testing and published progress, Agnikul appears to be trailing India’s other rocket startup Skyroot, though this could change in the coming year.

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India negotiating a possible Gaganyaan docking at ISS

11:17 am

India's Bharatiya Antariksh Station as outlined in 2024
India’s Bharatiya Antariksh Station as outlined in 2024.
Click for original image.

The head of India’s space agency ISRO, it is negotiating with NASA about doing a variety of manned space operations in conjunction with NASA, including a possible Gaganyaan docking to ISS.

According to a presentation by Isro chairman V Narayanan reviewed by TOI [Times of India], the future cooperation areas span three key areas of collaboration between the two nations’ space agencies.

The first involves comprehensive training of ISRO personnel, including astronauts, at NASA facilities across multiple domains, including robotics systems, extravehicular activity (EVA), extravehicular mobility unit (EMU) systems, resource management, space medicine and spaceflight operations, LEO and lunar mission control operations, rendezvous and docking procedures, and payload and science operations.

An important initiative outlined is the uncrewed docking demonstration of India’s Gaganyaan Orbital Module with the US Orbital Segment of the ISS — this would mark a significant technological milestone for India’s human spaceflight programme.

The third area focuses on cooperation in docking, berthing, and inter-operability systems.

It is clear ISRO wishes to get training from NASA for its manned missions. It also makes sense for it to make sure its Gaganyaan’s docking systems are compatible with ISS, Dragon, Starliner, Soyuz, and even China’s station.

Doing a test unmanned docking at ISS would also provide ISRO valuable experience in preparation for its own Bharatiya Antariksh Station (BAS). Its first module is presently scheduled for launch in 2028, with the entire station assembled by 2035.

None of this however has been finalized. If India were to do a docking at ISS, it would like have to wait until 2029, after the two tourist missions assigned to Axiom and Vast. ISS has a limited number of available ports, and I suspect a port really won’t be available until after those missions.

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First unmanned Gaganyaan mission facing delay

9:33 am

Artist rendering of India's Gaganyaan capsule
Artist rendering of India’s Gaganyaan capsule

Though this is not yet confirmed, sources inside India’s space agency ISRO are saying that the first unmanned Gaganyaan orbital test mission, presently targeting a March launch, is likely to be delayed in order to do additional safety checks, following the two consecutive launch failures of the agency’s PSLV rocket.

After the dual PSLV setbacks, there is zero appetite for risk at Isro. Every component, fitting, system, and subsystem of Gaganyaan is being re-examined in minute detail to ensure mission success.

The PSLV, traditionally regarded as Isro’s workhorse launcher, suffered rare back-to-back failures over the past two years, prompting a comprehensive review of quality assurance and mission readiness protocols across launch vehicles. While Gaganyaan is slated to fly aboard the Human-Rated Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (HLVM3), an upgraded version of the GSLV Mk-III, the recent setbacks have cast a shadow over the broader launch ecosystem.

The actual manned mission is presently scheduled for early next year, after a series of unmanned orbital test flights are completed in ’26. This schedule is significantly later than ISRO’s original schedule. When the program was first proposed in 2018, ISRO said the manned mission would happen in 2022.

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Fairing from India’s Bahubali rocket launched in December found in Maldives

9:00 am

A man fishing off an uninhabited island in the Maldives discovered what appears to be pieces from the fairing used by India’s LVM3 rocket, also dubbed Bahubali, when it launched AST SpaceMobile’s sixth Bluebird satellite in December.

A similar discovery was made on December 28, 2025 in Sri Lanka. In both cases it is theorized that the material came from the fairings of the December Bahubali launch.

I am unable to determine the flight path of the Bluebird launch, but the location of this debris suggests it headed strongly south from India’s east coast spaceport. The fairing pieces then drifted south and west to reach the Maldives after two months.

SpaceX routinely recovers its fairing and resuses them, which due to the fairing’s basic shape has turned out to be relatively straightforward. They have the shape of a boat’s hull, and after parachuting softly down can simply float on the surface until they can be picked up. It is absurd no one else does this.

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