Match the following missions to their respective purposes:
| List-I | List-II | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Mission | Purpose | ||
| (A) | Chandrayaan-3 | (I) | Development and launch of a dual-frequency synthetic aperture radar satellite |
| (B) | Gaganyaan-3 | (II) | Attempt for soft landing on moon |
| (C) | NISAR | (III) | Solar Observatory Mission |
| (D) | Aditya-L1 | (IV) | India's first crewed (human) space mission |
Choose the correct answer from the options given below:
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 1
The correct answer is Option (1) → (A)-(II), (B)-(IV), (C)-(I), (D)-(III)
(A) Chandrayaan-3 — this matches (II) Attempt for soft landing on moon. Its lander Vikram soft-landed near the Moon’s south pole on 23 August 2023, making India the first country to land in that region.
(B) Gaganyaan-3 — this matches (IV) India’s first crewed (human) space mission. Gaganyaan is ISRO’s human spaceflight programme: uncrewed test flights come first, and the crewed flight will carry Indian astronauts into low Earth orbit.
(C) NISAR — this matches (I) Development and launch of a dual-frequency synthetic aperture radar satellite. The NASA–ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite carries two radars, L-band from NASA and S-band from ISRO, to map changes on the Earth’s surface.
(D) Aditya-L1 — this matches (III) Solar Observatory Mission. Launched on 2 September 2023, it is India’s first space observatory for the Sun, placed in orbit around the Lagrange point L1, about 1.5 million km from the Earth.
Note: The paper follows ISRO’s first plan for Gaganyaan, in which two uncrewed test flights were to be followed by the crewed flight, the third one. ISRO later added more uncrewed test flights, so in its present plan Gaganyaan-3 (G3) is the third uncrewed flight and the first crewed flight is named H1. The other three matches still fix the answer as Option (1). ISRO kept adding test flights, but NTA’s paper is still holding the first timetable.