By Nivedita Bhattacharjee
BENGALURU (Reuters) – India has broadened its Gaganyaan human spaceflight endeavor by incorporating the construction and operation of a national space station, with plans for two crewed and six uncrewed missions by 2028, as announced by a minister on Thursday.
Gaganyaan, which translates to “sky craft” in Hindi, represents India’s pioneering human spaceflight mission. The objective is to launch a livable space capsule into a 400 km (250-mile) orbit and safely retrieve it with a splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
This mission aims to showcase India’s capacity to transport astronauts into space and bring them back, a feat accomplished thus far solely by the U.S., Russia, and China. The country had previously unveiled its intentions for a space station last year.
Providing an overview of the expanded tasks for the Gaganyaan mission, Deputy Minister Jitendra Singh informed the parliament that the mission’s budget has escalated to 201.93 billion rupees ($2.32 billion). Initially approved with a budget of about $1.1 billion, the project was originally conceived as having one crewed and two uncrewed missions. Ongoing are various test flights and assemblies.
The ambitious mission, initially declared in 2019 with the goal of sending Indian astronauts into space by 2022, has encountered setbacks primarily due to the COVID-19 pandemic, disruptions in the supply chain, and additional safety measures.
Delays have also been attributed to a worldwide scarcity of electronic components, space-compatible equipment, supplementary test missions, safety evaluations for astronauts, and alterations in the spacecraft’s design to keep its weight within the rocket’s carrying capacity, as stated by Singh in a written response to queries raised in parliament.
The advancement of India’s indigenous life support system, vital for sustaining astronauts in space, is taking longer than anticipated due to its novelty as a technology and the inability to procure it from overseas as planned, he further noted.
The nation aspires to establish an operational Bharatiya Antariksh Station by 2035 and dispatch an Indian crewed mission to the Moon by 2040. Notably, one of the Gaganyaan crew members, Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, is also slated to participate in Houston-based Axiom’s proposed Crew Dragon mission to the International Space Station.
($1 = 86.8925 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Bengaluru, Editing by William Maclean)
