NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi's manned space mission announcement on Wednesday though was a pleasant surprise to many Indians, the work for the same started long back.
In fact, first announcement of a manned mission to space was made on August 9, 2007 by the then Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), G Madhavan Nair.
According to observers of Indian science and space technology, in January 2010, the then ISRO chairman K Radhakrishnan had given the announcement a further push and fixed deadline of 2014 to "design and develop the space module".
The remarks were seen in the light of India "emerging" as a major player in the multi-billion dollar space market.
ISRO initially planned to work for 2-member man mission and according to its 2030 target, the Indian scientists would also send a mission to Mars in 2030.
However, sources said somewhere in between the government stance was that going by the country's needs, human space flight could not be "high on the priority list for the government".
The focus was more on satellites.
However, things have come back on track and now the work will be expedited to meet the deadline as suggested by Prime Minister Modi to send a manned mission to space by 2022 - when country completes 75 years of Independence.
For the manned mission, there has to be a 'difference' in work pattern vis-a-vis other missions - Chandrayaan (Moon Mission) as ISRO will have to develop a spacecraft where astronauts "can live" and also that the spacecraft has to come back to earth.
"The Environmental Control and Life Support System will now allow the crew model suitable and workable," a source said.
The focus would now be to develop a 'fully autonomous' three-ton spaceship called Gaganyaan to carry a 2-member crew to orbit and safely return to Earth.
The extendable version of the spaceship will allow flights up to seven days and docking capability with space stations or with an orbital platform, previous reports quoting ISRO say.
Meanwhile, ISRO has also announced that it has mega plans to launch more number of state-of-the-art satellites to further enhance operational applications and "cater to the needs of emerging applications".
Some state of the art satellites approved for launch till 2019-20 include third generation Cartosat series satellite for very high resolution mapping, second generation stereo imaging satellite for Digital Elevation Model, Geostationary Imaging Satellite (GISAT) for Earth observation from Geostationary Orbit and the third generation Ocean imaging satellite for ocean colour, sea surface temperature mapping and ocean surface wind vector mapping, official sources said.