Underscoring India’s ambitious vision for its space programme, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) chief S Somnath said the country will build a space station by 2035 and have an Indian presence on the Moon by 2040. The ISRO chief was speaking at the International Space Conference 2024 in Gandhinagar, Gujarat.
Reflecting on recent successes and the guidance provided by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Somnath said the Prime Minister has always been an enthusiastic supporter of India’s space endeavours.
“I look at the kind of approach the Prime Minister has given after this success story of the last six months. I think he has been a strong supporter of space programs since he was the Chief Minister of this state. ..What he told us is that we should make it a continuous activity of human presence in space,” the ISRO chief said.
“Although we have the Gaganyaan programme, it should continue for a longer period, leading to a human moon landing by 2040 and an Indian moon landing. It seems far away, but it’s not very far. that’s very close. And we have to have a space station by 2035, a space station that is accessible for Indians to go there and do research…,” he said.
The ISRO chief said, “We have a roadmap for what we have planned till 2047… We can build a space station, we can send humans to the Moon and we can create Moon-based economic activity in space. ” According to a report by ANI.
“We have not given the Prime Minister an over-ambitious target. 2040 is 17 years away and it is a good time to develop technologies to send humans to the Moon. Our work on the proposed space station is also progressing aggressively And we should be able to produce the first unit by 2028,” Somnath told TOI.
Somnath’s speech comes after a series of successful missions and announcements by ISRO, including the launch of the Aditya-L1 spacecraft to study the Sun from the first Sun-Earth Lagrangian point (L1) and the launch of the X-ray Polarimeter Satellite ( Exposat). ) to analyze cosmic X-rays.
ISRO is also preparing for the Gaganyaan mission, with a series of tests planned in 2024 to ensure readiness for a targeted 2025 launch.
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Published: Jan 11, 2024, 08:03 PM IST
