New Delhi: Union Minister of State for Space, Dr. Jitendra Singh has said the Gaganyaan, India’s first manned mission to space, will be the next major project before ISRO.
Gaganyaan project envisages demonstration of human spaceflight capability by launching crew of 3 members to an orbit of 400 km for a 3 days mission and bring them back safely to earth, by landing in Indian sea waters.
The pre-requisites for Gaganyaan mission include development of many critical technologies including human rated launch vehicle for carrying crew safely to space, Life Support System to provide an earth like environment to crew in space, crew emergency escape provision and evolving crew management aspects for training, recovery and rehabilitation of crew.
Various precursor missions are planned
Various precursor missions are planned for demonstrating the Technology Preparedness Levels before carrying out the actual Human Space Flight mission. Safety and reliability of all systems will be proven in unmanned missions preceding manned mission.
Dr. Jitendra Singh said we will have at least two missions before we send a human being. We will have the first mission possibly in September or early next year, where for a few hours we will send an empty spacecraft that will go up and come back into the waters to see if we are able to control its safe return without any damage. If that is successful, then we will have a second trial next year by sending a robot called Vyom Mitra.
Final mission will be the human mission
Dr Singh said if that is also successful, we will send the final mission, which will be the human mission. This could possibly take place in the second half of 2024. Initially we had planned it for 2022, but it got delayed due to Covid.
Dr Jitendra Singh said India has established its own regional navigation satellites system serving the strategic and civilian requirements in the last 9 years.
Emergence of Space sector Startups
Dr Jitendra Singh said the country started witnessing the emergence of Space sector Startups only after 2014 with nearly 200 startups at present, working across various space domains. The first Indian private sub-orbital launch was witnessed recently which was enabled through the Space sectoral reforms.
“Our ability to reach out to space is now proven beyond doubt as the Prime Minister himself said Space is no limit. So we have gone beyond space to discover the unexplored areas of the universe,” he said.
ISRO to launch awareness campaign
Dr Jitendra Singh said the ISRO will launch an awareness campaign across the country next month, mobilizing students and the common man in view of the huge interest witnessed in the live telecast of Chandrayaan-3 Moon Landing.
The awareness campaign will kick off on 1st September and will include online and offline activities including Flashmobs, Mega Town Halls, Quiz contests and Best Selfies, with a focus on Space Startups and Tech Partner Companies.
Touchdown of Chandrayaan-3 became most-watched event
With over 80 lakh concurrent viewers, the touchdown of Chandrayaan-3's lander module became the most-watched event on YouTube during live streaming. It even left behind the concurrent viewership of the football match between Brazil and South Korea during the World Cup 2022 quarterfinals, which had garnered 61 lakh views.
Around 7 crore viewers watched the Chandrayaan-3 landing later. However, the actual number of viewers could be higher due to numerous group screenings.
ISRO gearing up for launch of Aditya-L1 mission
Meanwhile, ISRO is gearing up for the launch of Aditya-L1 mission by the first week of September, using the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) XL with 7 payloads (instruments) onboard.
Aditya L1 would be the first space-based Indian mission to study the Sun. The spacecraft shall be placed in a halo orbit around the Lagrange point 1 (L1) of the Sun-Earth system, which is about 15 lakh km from the Earth. A satellite placed in the halo orbit around the L1 point has the major advantage of continuously viewing the Sun without any eclipses.
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