India to launch Shukrayaan Venus mission in 2024 after pandemic delays: reports - Space.com

India plans to launch a new orbiter to Venus in 2024, a year later than planned, according to media reports.

The Shukrayaan orbiter will be the first mission to Venus by the India Space Research Organization (ISRO) and will study the planet for four years, according to SpaceNews, which cited a presentation by an ISRO research scientist at a NASA-chartered committee Nov.

ISRO has been soliciting ideas for instruments for a Venus-based mission since at least 2018, according to its website.

Another instrument will be a Swedish-Indian collaboration known as the Venusian Neutrals Analyzer, which will examine how charged particles from the sun interact with the atmosphere of Venus, according to The Economic Times.

An earlier generation of this instrument launched on the Indian Chandrayaan-1 moon mission of 2008-09, studying how the sun's particles affect a world with a far more tenuous atmosphere.

Shukrayaan will also bring an instrument to Venus to examine the planet's atmosphere in infrared, ultraviolet and submillimeter wavelengths, Antonita said.

In September, the French space agency (CNES) announced it would also fly an instrument on Shukrayaan!

The Venus Infrared Atmospheric Gases Linker (VIRAL) is a collaboration with Russian federal space agency Roscosmos.

For example, the European Space Agency's Venus Express orbited the planet between 2006 and 2014, and Japan's Akatsuki spacecraft entered orbit in 2015 after a previous unsuccessful attempt.