India’s maiden human space mission “Gaganyaan” will be launched in 2023, said Union of State (Independent Charge) Science and Technology, Jitendra Singh, on Thursday. In reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, the Minister said, with this launch, India will become the fourth nation in the world to launch a Human Spaceflight Mission after United States, Russia and China. “The major missions viz., Test vehicle flight for the validation of Crew Escape System performance and the 1st Uncrewed mission of Gaganyaan (G1) are scheduled during the beginning of second half of 2022. This will be followed by the second uncrewed mission at the end of 2022 carrying ‘Vyommitra’ a spacefaring human-robot developed by ISRO and finally the first crewed Gaganyaan mission in 2023,” he added.
Referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Independence Day address in 2018, wherein he said that an Indian astronaut will go on a space odyssey by 2022 onboard “Gaganyaan”, Singh said that the program got slightly delayed due to Covid restrictions, but preparations are now in full swing to achieve the mission by 2023.
He said that the objective of the Gaganyaan programme is to demonstrate the capability to send humans to low earth orbit (LEO) onboard on Indian Launch Vehicle and bring them back to earth safely. Singh said that more than 500 industries are involved in the launch of Gaganyaan with several research modules including the indigenous health research module. The Union Minister said that this was made possible as, for the first time in 70 years, the sector has been unlocked for private participation to make India a competitive space market.
The Minister said that this is the most ambitious space programme undertaken by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) till date and will give a big boost to the Science and Technology development within the country, besides inspiring the Youth and Start-ups to take up bigger challenges and enhance the prestige of the country. For the Gaganyaan programme, the astronaut training facility is getting established at Bengaluru and is in an advanced stage of completion. Basic aeromedical training and flying practice completed as part of the Indian leg of training.
The design of all systems of Gaganyaan has been completed. The realisation of various systems are in different stages of progress. Ground qualification tests of human-rated launch vehicle propulsion stages have been already commenced and successfully progressing.
The configuration and design of ground infrastructure have been completed and modifications needed are being implemented. The activities related to the development of microgravity experiments have commenced, the conceptual design for experiments is under review.
Meanwhile, Chandrayaan-3 is in an advanced stage of realisation and it is targeted to be launched in the second quarter of the financial year 2022-2023, Minister Jitendra Singh informed the Rajya Sabha on Thursday. In a written reply, the Minister said all the systems in both “Propulsion Module and Rover Module have been realized, integrated and tested”. In the Lander Module, Singh said most of the systems have been realised and tests are under progress. “Chandrayaan-3 is targeted to be launched in the second quarter of the financial year 2022-2023. Integrated Sensors and Navigation performance test on the Lander have been completed and other tests are in progress,” said the Minister.