In the wake of the successful launch of the moon mission Chandrayaan-3 this August, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman Sreedhara Somanath announced on Tuesday that India is all set for its mission to Venus.
He also claimed that the mission's payloads have been developed, marking an important step in India's exploration of space.
Speaking at the Indian National Science Academy in Delhi, Somanath said that India has many more missions in the pipeline and the Venus mission has been configured, the payloads have also been developed for it.
He described Venus as a fascinating planet and claimed that research into the planet could provide answers to a number of open space science topics.
"Venus is a very interesting planet. It also has an atmosphere. Its atmosphere is so thick. The atmospheric pressure is 100 times that of Earth, and it is full of acids. You cannot penetrate the surface. We don't know whether its surface is hard or not. Why are we trying to understand all of this? Earth could be Venus one day. I don't know. Maybe in 10,000 years [Earth] will have changed its characteristics. Earth was never like this. It was not a habitable place a long time ago,” Somanath said.
The European Space Agency's (ESA) Venus-Express mission - the first probe intended to investigate Venus in more than a decade - was successfully launched by a Russian rocket.
Even Japan's Akatsuki Venus Climate Orbiter, which has been in orbit since 2016, completed a trip to the planet.
More than a third of the 30 space missions to fly successfully by or orbit Venus to date were part of the former Soviet Union's Venera series of robotic probes.
Following ISRO chief's announcement about India's Venus mission, a space expert shared his views on the development with Sputnik India.
According to Dr. T.V. Venkateswaran, a scientist associated with Vigyan Prasar, which comes under the Indian government's Department of Science and Technology, Venus is a sister planet to Earth, and the size of Venus and the Earth are somewhat similar.
But the big difference between the two planets, as per Venkateswaran, is that Venus rotates very slowly, taking about 200 days to go around the sun.
Moreover, it is rotating from east to west, which means the sun will rise in the west on Venus, he revealed. Venkateswaran observed that Venus is a mysterious planet.
"Even with a power telescope, you won't be able to see the ground because it's always permanently covered with cloud, most likely - sulfuric acid. So it's a mysterious planet," the space scientist concluded.
After Chandrayaan-3's success, ISRO launched the Aditya L1 spacecraft on 2 September this year, marking India's first space-based mission to study the Sun.