Every Cosmic Herald story on ISRO — missions, launches, discoveries, and the business of space, newest first.
A NASA-ISRO radar satellite stitched passes from December 2025 through August 2026 into a 17-frame time-lapse of lava spilling from Kamchatka's Krasheninnikov volcano, which erupted for the first time since roughly 1550, days after a magnitude-8.8 earthquake.
Read the story →In Paris, ESA and ISRO quietly stretched a 24-year-old cooperation pact five more years and folded in space weather, human and robotic exploration, and orbital sustainability.
ISRO's GSLV-F17 successfully placed the EOS-05 Earth observation satellite into orbit, marking the agency's first launch since January and restarting its 2026 cadence.
At a Bengaluru meeting in late July, Indian and Japanese engineers finalized how their lander and rover will talk to and power each other on the Chandrayaan-5/LUPEX mission to hunt for lunar water ice.
On July 18, 2026, Skyroot Aerospace's Vikram-1 reached a ~450 km orbit on its first flight from Sriharikota — the first orbital launch by a private Indian company, making India the third nation where a private firm has reached orbit.
ISRO validated the cold-gas uprighting system, umbilical separation mechanism, and apex cover structure for Gaganyaan's crew module, clearing a key hurdle before India's first crewed spaceflight.
Skyroot Aerospace's Vikram-1 sits fully stacked at Sriharikota with a July 12–August 4 window to become India's first privately built and launched orbital rocket.
Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, Starship, New Glenn, Vulcan Centaur, Neutron, Ariane 6, and six more launch vehicles compared on payload, cost per launch, and reusability, including China's Long March 10B, which on July 10 became just the third rocket in history to catch its own booster.
ISRO dropped a dummy-loaded main parachute from 2.5 km over Madhya Pradesh on July 7, the fifth test in a series meant to qualify the ten-parachute system that will bring Gaganyaan's crew module down into the sea.
ISRO ground-fired the SOLVE solid motor for 10 hours at Sriharikota on July 3, 2026, clearing a key checkpoint for the sub-orbital vehicle that will validate Gaganyaan's 10-parachute descent system.
ISRO's Chandrayaan-3 south pole landing in 2023 and Aditya-L1 solar observatory marked a turning point. With Gaganyaan crewed flights approaching and a Venus mission on the books, India is building the infrastructure of a major spacefaring nation.
India's Gaganyaan program — the country's first crewed spaceflight mission — has completed its uncrewed test flights and is closing in on a crew launch. A successful mission would make India only the fourth nation to independently send humans to orbit.
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