ISRO Chief claims India can travel to 'Mars and Venus', calls for more investment

The success Chandrayaan-3 is taking India’s expectations in space to a new high and in the same view ISRO Chief S Somanath on Sunday claimed that India can reach even Mars and Venus if the space sector gets more investment. “India has the capability to travel to the Moon, Mars and Venus but we need to increase our confidence. We need more investment and the space sector must develop and by this, the whole nation should develop, that is our mission. We’re ready to fulfil the vision that was given to us by PM Modi,” Somnath told reporters Saturday late evening. On Wednesday the Chandrayaan-3, India’s third unmanned Moon mission’s lander module made a flawless soft-landing, making it only the fourth country to achieve this feat, and the first to reach the uncharted South Pole of Earth’s only natural satellite. A couple of days later on Friday, ISRO said the Chandrayaan-3 rover, called ‘Pragyan’, has successfully traversed a distance of about eight metres and its payloads have been turned on. After hitting the moon, the ISRO is already aiming for the Sun. The Indian space agency is gearing up for a solar mission launch just in a week, most probably on 2 September, according to the news agency PTI. Aditya-L1 spacecraft is designed to provide remote observations of the solar corona and in situ observations of the solar wind at L1 (Sun-Earth Lagrangian point), which is about 1.5 million kilometres from the Earth. It will be the first dedicated Indian space mission for observations of the Sun to be launched by the Bengaluru-headquartered space agency. Yesterday as Prime Minister Narendra Modi was returning from a four-day visit to South Africa ( for the BRICS summit) and Greece, steeped out of the usual routine of coming straith to Delhi and chose to first land in Bengaluru to be with the ISRO team behind the successful Lunar Mission. Addressing his supporters who had gathered at HAL airport to welcome him, the PM hailed the “historic feat” achieved by the country’s scientific community. “I could not come earlier as I was not in the country, but I decided to visit Bengaluru first and meet our scientists on arrival in India,” PM Modi said.