SCIENCE

Crew Dragon
▪ Crew Dragon is a reusable spacecraft developed by SpaceX to transport astronauts to the
International Space Station (ISS) and to evacuate astronauts from space.
▪ The spacecraft Crew Dragon developed by SpaceX has successfully transported National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) astronauts to the International Space Station.
▪ SpaceX became the first private company to orbit human spaceflight, an achievement accomplished by the United States, Russia, and China.
Soyuz Spacecraft
▪ Soyuz is a Russian spacecraft that transports people and materials to the International Space Station (ISS).
▪ Up to three people can travel in it.
Gaganyaan Project
▪ The Gaganyaan mission is India’s ongoing project that will send a mission with a 3-person crew to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) 400 km away for 3 days and bring them back safely to Earth.
▪ The first crewed spaceflight is expected to take place before 2026

▪ The success of the Gaganyaan mission will place India in the ranks of countries (USA, Russia and China) with human spaceflight capability.

Chandrayaan-1
▪ Chandrayaan-1, India’s first lunar mission, was successfully launched from Sriharikota on October 22, 2008.
▪ This spacecraft orbited the moon at a height of 100 km from the lunar surface and provided chemical, mineralogical and photo-geological mapping of the moon.
▪ This spacecraft carried a total of 11 scientific instruments developed in India and other countries.
Chandrayaan-2
▪ The Chandrayaan-2 mission was successfully launched on July 22, 2019 from Satish Dhawan
Space Centre (SDSC) at Sriharikota via GSLV MkIII-M1.
▪ After successive Earth-bound maneuvers, the spacecraft entered the Lunar Transfer Trajectory (LTT) on August 14.
▪ On August 20, the Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI) maneuver was performed, whereby Chandrayaan-2 was successfully inserted into an elliptical orbit around the moon.
▪ This was followed by successive lunar orbit maneuvers to reduce the orbit to a circular polar orbit around the moon.
Chandrayaan-3
▪ Chandrayaan-3, a follow-up mission to Chandrayaan-2, was successfully launched on LVM-3 on July 14, 2023 to demonstrate complete capability for safe landing and roving on the lunar surface.
▪ It consists of lander and rover configuration.
▪ It will be launched by LVM3 from Sriharikota.
▪ The propulsion module will carry the lander and rover configuration to 100 km lunar orbit.

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