ISRO is short of the Indian Space Research Organisation. It functions under the Department of Space which is directly looked after by the Prime Minister of India, the executive of DOS is the chairman of ISRO. This agency comes in as the sixth successful space organization and launched various satellites of other countries successfully. It was established in 1962 by the Government of India as INCOSPAR (Indian National Committee for Space Research) and speculated by scientist Vikram Sarabhai. 

IN 1969, INCOSPR was developed as ISRO. It is located in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, India. ISRO built its first satellite Aryabhata which was launched by the Soviet space agency “Intercosmos” in 1975. Five years later in 1980, ISRO launched its first satellite RS-I with its SLV-3 (Space Launch Vehicle) and became the 7th country in the world to have made orbital launches. 

ISRO after that successfully developed many satellites, rockets, networking, and many other things to take further steps in technology. ISRO is the world’s largest remote-sensing satellite and operates GAGAN (GPS-aided GEO Augmented Navigation (GAGAN)) and IRNSS (Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System) and also sent three missions to the moon and one to Mars. Future goals include landing a rover on the Moon, the development of a semi-cryogenic engine, sending humans into space, and more unmanned missions to the Moon, Mars, Venus, and the Sun, and the deployment of more telescopes to observe cosmic events and outer space beyond the Solar System.

List of former chairpersons of ISRO:

Name	Term
	Start	End
Vikram Sarabhai	1963	1971
M. G. K. Menon	January 1972	September 1972
Satish Dhawan	1973	1984
U. R. Rao	1984	1994
K. Kasturirangan	1994	27 August 2003
G. Madhavan Nair	September 2003	29 October 2009
K. Radhakrishnan	30 October 2009	31 December 2014
Shailesh Nayak	1 January 2015	12 January 2015
A. S. Kiran Kumar	14 January 2015	14 January 2018
K. Sivan	15 January 2018	15 January 2022
S. Somanath	15 January 2022	Incumbent

Lunar Exploration Mission History:

Chandrayan-1      

This is the first mission to the Moon. The project was announced on 15 August 2003 by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The project got a boost during the tenure of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. It was launched on 22 October 2008 by PSLV-XL rocket and the landing on 8 November 2008, after a year the orbital faced some technical problems and communication broke down on 29 August 2009 with this mission.

By this mission, India has become the 5th country to send a spacecraft to the Moon in search of water. The estimated cost for the project was around ₹386 crore.

Launch Mass: 1380 kg

Mission Life: 2 years

Power: 700 W

Launch Vehicle: PSLV-C11

Type of Satellite: Science & Exploration

Manufacturer: ISRO

Owner: ISRO

Application: Planetary Observation

Orbit Type: Lunar

Chandrayan-2

This mission was launched on 22 July 2019. This rocket takes an orbiter, a rover, and a lander to the Moon. The lander was named Vikram after the founder of ISRO, Vikram Sarabhai. This is ISRO’s second lunar exploration mission with the LVM-3(Launch Vehicle  Machine-3) rocket. The lander was planned to land in the south polar region in search of water ice on the surface, lunar exploration, and element abundance, the planned life of this mission was about seven and a half years.

The mission faced several problems, such as the initial responsibilities of the orbiter and rover were on ISRO, while the lander was provided by Roscosmos (the Russian space agency), but several dates were changed as Russia failed to provide the lander on the specified date. After this India decided to make it independently and there were many disturbances in the mission. So the mission date gradually changed from 14 July 2019 to 22 July 2019. On the Landing date on 6 September 2019, a software glitch caused communication loss just before Vikram landed on the lunar surface.

The cost of the project was around Rs 978 crore including Rs 603cr. for Lander, Rover, Navigation, and ground support network, and 375cr. on Geostationary Satellite Launch Vehicle.

Launch Mass: 3,850 kg

Power: Orbiter: 1000 watts, Vikram lander: 650 watts, Pragyan rover: 50 watts

Launch Vehicle: LVM3 M1

Manufacturer: ISRO

Owner: ISRO               

Orbit Type: Lunar

Chandryan-3         

It is the third mission under the Chandrayaan series, the mission was launched on 14 July 2023 from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota (Andhra Pradesh).  Launched with-rocket LMV-3 with a rover and lander (Vikram). The main objective of this mission is to perform a soft landing on the Moon mission and conduct experiments with lunar surface material to better understand the composition of the Moon. 

Under the new cross-support arrangement, the European Space Agency will support ISRO’s tracking of this mission and also future missions of India’s first human space flight “Gaganyan” and “Aditya-1” solar research mission. In return, ISRO also supports Europe Space Ageny’s future mission with ISRO’s tracking stations. The estimated cost for the project is around ₹615 crore.

Launch Mass: 3900 kg

Power: Propulsion Module: 758 W Lander Module: 738W, WS with Bias Rover: 50W

Launch Vehicle: LVM3 M4

Manufacturer: ISRO

Owner: ISRO

Orbit Type: Lunar

Latest Update

The spacecraft was inserted into the translunar orbit & achieved 288 km x 369328 km. Lunar-Orbit Insertion is planned for Aug 5, 2023, and sends its first image.

Chandrayaan-3’s orbit is reduced to 174 km x 1437 km following a maneuver performed on August 9, 2023.