ISRO working on multiple targets but Gaganyaan is its immediate priority: S Somanath

The Gaganyaan mission’s goal is to launch humans into space, placing them in a low earth orbit at an altitude of 400 kilometres for a three-day mission

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is working on multiple targets but Gaganyaan, India’s first human space flight programme, is its immediate primary, the agency’s chairman S Somanath said on Wednesday.

ISRO Chairman S Somanath. (PTI)

“There are many [targets]. It is not one target. But our primary target is Gaganyaan now. Send an Indian to space and bring them back safely. This is our immediate big-ticket target,” Somanath said on the sidelines of the 2023 Global Energy Parliament in Kolkata.

The Gaganyaan mission’s goal is to launch humans into space placing them in a low earth orbit at an altitude of 400 kilometres for a three-day mission in 2025.

Somanath said the agency plans to set up the first module of India’s space station by 2028 and complete it by 2035.

In October, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked the space agency to aim for a manned mission to the moon by 2040 and to establish an Indian space station by 2035.

Somanath said that Aditya L1, India’s first space-based mission to study the sun, is on its way. “Our expectation is that it will enter the Lagrange point 1 (L1) by January 7. We had to do some maneuverers,” he said.

The spacecraft will be placed around L1, which is about 1.5 million km from the earth. A satellite placed in that area will have the advantage of continuously seeing the sun without any eclipses.

“Chandrayaan–3 has created an inspiration for everybody. We are the fourth nation to land any craft on the moon and the first to land on the southern part. All this shows that India’s scientific and engineering skills are very high. We did not depend on anybody to build the craft and the mission planning. We consulted many people. The whole creation is our own,” Somanath said.

West Bengal governor CV Ananda Bose, who inaugurated the Global Energy Parliament, presented the Governor’s Excellence Award to Somanath.