Work on India’s planned Venus mission is under way and the mission will aim for unique scientific observations and outcomes, said S Somanath, Chairperson of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), on Wednesday. Speaking at the inauguration of a one-day meet on Venusian Science in Ahmedabad, the ISRO chief said, “Currently a Venus mission has been conceived, a project report is made, money identified, an overall plan has been prepared.all this has been done. But then, we would like to look at it in a different manner today.” “...what you are going to give as results (from the mission) to the society, to the community of scientists, as global knowledge, this is most important,” he added. “Second goal (of the Venus mission) is to review what unique, additional information, knowledge, observations that we can make which have not been done by others,” he added. Stressing on the importance of acquiring unique information for the mission to be considered a successful one, he said, “We all know that Chandrayaan had a very successful and unique outcome. Similarly, the Mars mission, too, had unique outcomes. Let us look at this mission from that point of view.” The conference, which was live streamed, included presentations on the themes of Sun and Venus connection, Venusian atmospheric and surface studies and sessions on opportunities for user community as well as the scientific context and possibilities. Recounting that while ISRO started using space as a platform to conduct experiments and exploratory missions, it eventually evolved to cater to services of an “operational nature”, Somanath emphasised on bringing back focus on the science and its development and the necessity to do so so as to ensure sufficient funding and support from policy makers. Somanath said, “The most important point is that it is a very costly affair. When you make such an investment, it is important to prove to the decision makers that this investment is worth doing it.” Emphasising on the need for the scientists’ pool in India to bring answers to complex problems, Somanath added, “It is through this only that we can sustain such programmes, under difficult situations of budgetary constraints, resource constraints etc.”
