Planned for 2022, The Indian Space Research Organisation is on its way to launch the country’s first human spaceflight mission, Gaganyaan.
According to The Economic Times, ISRO Chairman Dr K Sivan said that once the Gaganyaan mission has been successfully launched, the space agency plans to carry out more manned missions in the future and a space station has also been planned.
In an interview, Dr K Sivan said,
Before Independence Day in 2022, we are targeting the first manned mission. We will sustain that with more human spaceflight missions. Then we will have our own space station.
To carry a three-member crew to space, ISRO has designed an autonomous 3.7 tonnes of spacecraft, however, it is likely to have only one astronaut in its maiden human space flight.
Dr Sivan said that for this high-profile mission, four IAF pilots will head to Russia later this month to begin an intensive programme to train as astronauts. For this mission, Russia will train Indian astronauts and build the life support systems in the crew capsule.
Before sending astronauts into space, later this year, ISRO will send a humanoid into space using its most powerful rocket, Geosynchronous Launch Vehicle GSLV-MkIII. To make it suitable for a human, the rocket will be fine-tuned to be safe enough with zero to minimum errors to carry a human on board. This will be the first of the two unmanned missions.
For the human space flight mission, which has been in the works for nearly two decades, India has earmarked over ₹10,000 crores.
