BENGALURU: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman K Sivan on Wednesday said Prime Minister Narendra Modi's deadline of 2022 for sending an Indian into space is well on its way to be achieved.
The announcement by Modi — who termed the mission 'Gaganyaan' — came as a 'pleasant surprise', he said and added the space agency could conduct its first unmanned mission — which will be similar in all parameters to the human space flight — within two years.
"The critical technology for the human spaceflight programme is already being developed. The GSLV Mk-III launch rocket will be used and by the time the programme is ready for take off, this platform will have completed 10-15 flights. The budget requirement for the space flight program will be small as most of the technologies have been developed using our research and development budgets in the previous years," Sivan said adding that initial estimates showed a requirement of Rs 10,000 crore for the project.
Talking about the various components that will comprise India's space flight programme, Sivan said the environmental conditioning and life support systems were being developed and the space agency had also started work on the flight suit that the Indian astronauts (called Vyomanaut) will wear in space.
"The GSLV Mk-III will have to be made ready for humans and there will be some loss in thrust which will negate the risk of high G-forces affecting the astronauts. Our next step is to work out a report and put together a team. The report will be ready in 2 months time," he said.
When asked if the mission, which was not high on ISRO's priority list before the announcement, might not prove to be too much for the agency, Sivan said that ISRO will look at offloading repetitive processes, like the production of satellites, to private industry.
"We will use the PSLV, GSLV and GSLV Mk-III rockets to launch 50 satellites. Most of these satellite missions are of a repetitive nature. We will offload this to industry and only do quality control. This will give us the manpower in ISRO for the HSP programme," he said.
The mission could fuel a lot of interest in the coming years and, according to ISRO estimates, will also result in the creation of 15,000 new jobs.
"Right now, there are no plans to get technology from out of India as our version will be better and more cost-effective," he said.
The mission and the technology it develops will result in several spin-offs for the country's domestic sector like the Lithium-ion technology that ISRO is now giving to companies for developing electric vehicle technology.
"Some civilian uses could be space tourism or even space travel across continents where you can fly to a new continent in 15 minutes instead of 20 hours that it takes now. These are all possibilities," he said.
As part of its research into human spaceflight, the agency has in the recent past held demonstrations for the crew module, the crew escape module and the GSLV Mk-III. The human spaceflight programme, if viewed as one single project, will be the biggest that the agency has handled so far.
"It is possible and the timeline is realistic as we are not starting from ground zero. We have crossed the tough period of research and in the next 4 years, we will take the several components and mould it into one project. I personally want to achieve the target before the deadline," Sivan said.