Excitement Is in the Air As ISRO Plans To Explore the Dark Side of the Moon

No country has ever explored the dark side of the moon and so there is much excitement as the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in collaboration with Japan plans to explore the permanent shadow region of the moon. At the Akash Tattva conference held in Dehradun last month, Anil Bhardwaj, the director of the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad, during a presentation on ISRO's next missions said that the space agency also intended to send a probe to Mars. Bhardwaj stated that it was in discussions with the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) about sending a lunar rover to investigate the moon's permanent shadow region. According to the initial plans, a Japanese rocket will launch an ISRO-built lunar lander and rover into orbit with a planned landing site close to the south pole of the moon. The rover will subsequently move to the permanent shadow area of the moon that is always under shade and never receives sunlight, according to Bhardwaj. He claimed that the exploration of the area was fascinating since anything that had persisted in the PSR zone was similar to something that had been frozen for eons. Bhardwaj also spoke about Aditya L-1 which is a unique mission to place a 400-kg class satellite carrying the payload in an orbit around the Sun in such a way that it can continuously view the star. It would try to understand the coronal heating, solar wind acceleration, and the initiation of the coronal mass ejection, flares and near-earth space weather. According to Bhardwaj, the Aditya L-1 and Chandrayaan-3 missions would be prioritized starting as early as next year, and the trips to Venus and the moon with JAXA would certainly follow.