By Nivedita Bhattacharjee
BENGALURU (Reuters) – India has expanded its Gaganyaan human spaceflight mission to include building and operating a national space station, planning two crewed and six uncrewed missions by 2028, a minister said on Thursday.
Gaganyaan, meaning “sky craft” in Hindi, is India’s first human spaceflight mission. It aims to launch a habitable space capsule into a 400 km (250-mile) orbit and safely return it with a splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
The mission will demonstrate India’s capability to send astronauts into space and bring them back, a milestone achieved so far only by the U.S., Russia, and China. The nation announced its plan for a space station last year.
Outlining the Gaganyaan mission’s expanded tasks, deputy minister Jitendra Singh told parliament the mission’s budget had risen to 201.93 billion rupees ($2.32 billion). It had earlier received budget approval of about $1.1 billion, and was originally planned as a project with one crewed and two uncrewed missions.
Various test flights and assemblies are under way.
The ambitious mission, which was originally announced in 2019 with a target to send Indian astronauts into space by 2022, has faced delays, primarily due to the COVID-19 pandemic, supply chain disruptions, and additional safety measures.
The delay has also been caused by a global shortage in the supply of electronic components, equipment suitable for use in space, extra test missions, safety checks for astronauts, and a change in the spacecraft’s design to keep its weight within the carrying capacity of the rocket, Singh said in a written answer to questions raised in parliament.
The development of India’s own life support system crucial for sustaining astronauts in space is also taking longer because it is a new technology and could not be sourced from abroad as planned, he added.
The country is aiming to have an operational Bharatiya Antariksh Station by 2035 and sending an Indian crewed mission to the Moon by 2040.
One of the Gaganyaan crew members, Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, is also part of the crew for Houston-based Axiom’s planned Crew Dragon mission to the International Space Station.
($1 = 86.8925 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Nivedita Bhattacharjee in Bengaluru, Editing by William Maclean)
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