ISRO Chairman S Somnath, while delivering the Sardar Patel Memorial Lecture on All India Radio on Saturday, also revealed new dates for some important upcoming missions.
According to Somnath, the manned space mission Gaganyaan will probably be launched in 2026.
Also, Chandrayaan-4, the mission to return samples from the Moon, is likely to be launched in 2028. He also informed that the India-US joint NISAR mission has been scheduled for next year.
ISRO Chairman said that the joint moon landing mission with Japan’s space agency JAXA will be Chandrayaan-5 mission. It was originally called LUPEX (Lunar Polar Exploration).
He did not mention the time frame for its launch. The LUPEX mission was earlier scheduled to launch within 2025, but has now been reported as Chandrayaan-5. This can be expected only after 2028.
Somnath said, “This will be a very heavy mission in which the lander will be provided by India, while the rover will come from Japan.
The rover on Chandrayaan-3 weighed only 27 kg, but this mission will have a 350 kg rover. “This is a science-intensive mission that will take us one step closer to landing humans on the Moon.”
India has unveiled plans for a manned mission to the Moon by 2040.
Somnath said the opening up of the space sector to private enterprises, new enabling policies and the enthusiasm shown by young entrepreneurs have created a vibrant space ecosystem in India. “Our contribution to the global space economy is still around 2 per cent,” he said. Our aspiration is to increase this to about 10 per cent in the next 10-12 years. But ISRO cannot achieve this alone. We need involvement of other stakeholders. Everyone from start-ups to big companies will have to come and participate in India’s space sector. We are working hard to create enabling mechanisms that make it easier for companies to work with ISRO.”
The ISRO Chairman said that India’s dependence on imports of space technologies has reduced significantly in the last decade, but a lot still remains to be done. He said, “Many important items used in the space sector still come from outside. “We have to develop the capacity to manufacture many of these in our country.”
Somnath said India has an old and rich tradition of studying stars and galaxies.
It is after a long time that the country is generating new knowledge in the field of astronomy and contributing to global efforts in space exploration.
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