Plan Panel boost-off for space mission

India's ambition to explore the outer space seems taking off. The Planning Commission sanctioned Rs 12,400 crore for the lunar project, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Feb 23, 2009, 24:39:11 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India's ambition to explore the outer space seems taking off. The Planning Commission on Friday sanctioned Rs 12,400 crore for the lunar project.

“We support the project. It is a long term plan and good for the country,” said Planning Commission's deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia. The announcement came after a meeting of a task force on the space mission.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had inked agreement with Russia in December 2008 to collaborate for the human space mission. Russia was supposed to help in pre-project work, but there was no formal approval for it.

“It (agreement) was part of pre-project work for which we got Rs 95 crore,” said ISRO director Dr K. Radhakrishnan.

But it was on Friday that ISRO got a thumping support from Ahluwalia for the mission. The proposal has been sent to the Prime Minister's Office for final approval.

Russia would provide necessary equipment for the spacecraft to hover 275 kilometres above the earth's orbit before landing in either Arabian Sea or Bay of Bengal.

Prior to that, ISRO will send an unmanned spaceship in 2013 or 2014 as a preparatory spacecraft for the human mission. Two persons, yet to be selected for the mission, will undergo severe training for over a year.

“Their lifestyle and food habits will change,” said Radhakrishnan. They will have to live in conditions similar to space for more than a year and will get training on how to handle any exigency.

India joined the elite club of Russia, US, China and Japan in 2008 after its successful launch of the unmanned mission to moon, Chandrayan.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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