ISRO chief K Sivan unveils mission programme for 2020: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman K Sivan briefed the media on the organisation’s mission programme and Gaganyaan project in 2020 in Bengaluru on Wednesday. Gaganyaan is the first indigenous manned mission of ISRO. Four Indian astronauts have been selected for the mission and they will undergo training in the third week of January 2020.
ISRO will launch the cost-effective Gaganyaan manned mission in 2020 and send three persons into space — two men and one woman. Odisha’s Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) has supplied 30.5 tonnes of maraging steel required for the upcoming project. The special quality steel, that requires stringent manufacturing parameters, contains nickel, cobalt, molybdenum, titanium and aluminium and is manufactured through a vacuum melting process.
Speaking on Chandrayan-3 lunar mission, Sivan said the ruling BJP government has approved the lunar project and ISRO scientists are working on it. The ISRO chief said the space organisation has made good progress on Chandrayan-2, even though they failed to land the Vikaram lander successfully, the orbiter is still functioning, it is going to function for the next 7 years to produce crucial data. ISRO’s land acquisition plan for a second spaceport has been initiated and the port will be in Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu, he added.
Gaganyaan Highlights:
– The Gaganyaan programme, which is expected to cost less than Rs 10,000 crore, will provide employment to 15,000 people.
– ISRO has developed most of the critical technologies like re-entry mission capability, crew escape system, crew module configuration, thermal protection system, and the prototype of a space suit to send humans to space.
– The Gaganyaan system module is a combination of the service module and the crew module. It will place the spacecraft in a low earth orbit of 300-400 km.
– The height of the crew module could be 7 metres while its diameter is 3.7-metre.
– ISRO’s workhorse GSLV Mk III will be used to launch Gaganyaan.
– The crew capsule will take 36 minutes to splashdown in the Sea while the crew module will be recovered within 15-20 days.
The astronauts will take only 16 minutes to reach the classroom while the crew capsule will take 36 minutes to splashdown in the sea. The crew capsule could land in the Arabian Sea or the Bay of Bengal near the Gujarat coast or even land. If fructified, India will be the fourth country to send people to space after America, Russia and China.
Earlier, Union Minister for Department of Space Jitendra Singh had said Chandrayan-3 will carry only a lander mission. Following the crash landing of Chandrayaan-2’s Vikram lander on the lunar south pole on September 7, 2019, ISRO scientists had started work on the second lander mission.
The ISRO has also planned to launch Aditya-L1 Mission in 2020.
