These upcoming launches carry added significance in light of setbacks suffered in recent years.
If Rakesh Sharma represented the dreams of a nascent India looking outward, Shubhanshu Shukla embodies a confident India reaching for the controls.
Shifting the focus to its next space odyssey after successfully placing a lander on the moon's uncharted South Pole region, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief S Somanath on Saturday said that the country's maiden solar mission Aditya-L1 is ready and will be launched in the first week of September.
Aditya-L1 spacecraft is designed for providing 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.
This is ISRO's new record of launching 20 satellites, including those from the US, Germany, Canada and Indonesia.
Aditya-L1, the first space-based Indian observatory to study the Sun, is getting ready for its launch soon, ISRO said on Monday.
The ISRO is aiming for a soft landing of the lander in the South Pole region of the moon where no country has gone so far.
Ahead of India's Mars orbiter's scheduled rendezvous with the red planet on September 24, ISRO is all set for the crucial fourth trajectory correction manoeuvre and test fire of the main liquid engine on the spacecraft on Monday.
According to sources in the Bengaluru-headquartered space agency, under the Department of Space, delivery of hardware by the industry was hit due to the lockdown imposed in several States to contain the pandemic in recent months.
GSAT-18, which aims at providing telecommunications services for the country by strengthening ISRO's current fleet of 14 operational telecom satellites, was launched into a Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit about 32 minutes after the lift-off.
The Rs 978 crore mission, which has been rescheduled for Monday after scientists corrected the glitch in the rocket, will be launched at 2.43 p.m from the second launchpad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre, over 100 km from Chennai.
National Security Advisor Ajit Doval will hold crucial talks with the top US leadership, including his counterpart Jake Sullivan, on the first high-level dialogue on Initiative for Critical and Emerging Technologies (iCET).
From The New York Times to BBC and The Guardian to The Washington Post, the historic event in India's space programme on Wednesday made headlines across the globe.
'You declare a date, time and place for the landing two months in advance and exactly at that moment, it touched on the moon.'
The nine-second de-orbiting or retro-orbiting manoeuvre was executed at 3.42 am using the onboard propulsion system.
Although Russia, United States and China have achieved a soft landing on the lunar surface, India is aiming at becoming the first one to explore the south pole of the Moon.
This is the joint statement issued by the ministry of external affairs on the visit of US President Barack Obama to India.