BENGALURU, October 21 — The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) finalized the technical configuration of 19 scientific payloads on Tuesday for India's maiden interplanetary Venus Orbiter Mission (VOM / Shukrayaan-1), slated for launch aboard an LVM3 rocket in March 2028.
Sanctioned by the Union Cabinet with a financial outlay of ₹1,236 Crore, the spacecraft will carry 16 Indian payloads, two collaborative instruments, and one international payload into an elliptical polar orbit around Venus. The primary scientific suite is anchored by a high-resolution S-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) and a Venus Sub-Surface Radar capable of penetrating Venus’s opaque sulphuric acid cloud cover to map surface volcanism, tectonic faults, and subsurface stratigraphy.
ISRO planetary scientists noted that studying Venus—often termed Earth’s twin due to comparable mass and size—will unlock critical insights into how a runaway greenhouse effect transformed a potentially habitable world into a high-pressure carbon-dioxide atmosphere with surface temperatures exceeding 475°C.
Planetary characteristics of Venus (retrograde rotation, highest albedo, super-rotating atmosphere, and absence of intrinsic magnetic field), physics of Synthetic Aperture Radar imaging, and India's interplanetary exploration roadmap represent high-yield topics for UPSC Prelims and GS-III.