India Prepares Up For Crewed Space Missions With Its New Human Space Flight Center

According to The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), a Human Space Flight Centre is launched in the south Indian city of Bangalore in line with various plans for its first crewed mission in 2021. Dr. K Kasturirangan is the ex-Chairman of the ISRO Human Space Flight Centre. He has inaugurated this center. Chairman Dr. K Sivan and other officials too were present in the inauguration. The facility is next to ISRO Headquarter.

Only the US, China, and Russia (Soviet Union) have expert crewed missions to space which were planned and executed completely on their respective home soil. The primary reason for this is because space shuttles remain prohibitively expensive.

 For example, the space shuttle programme of NASA which started in the 1970s hoped to decrease the cost of space travel to under a few tens of millions of dollars per launch. But even in 2011, the total estimated cost of the used shuttles was $209 billion which is nearly $1.6 billion per flight. India has an opportunity with the Gaganyaan mission for entering this elite range of countries and announces its entry into the space mining race. While space mining is still in a budding stage, should the geopolitical conditions open the door for various countries to initiate the operations, India could be one of the first countries to begin.

 ISRO focuses on sending humans to space by December 2021 with the help of its Gaganyaan mission, which, according to the agency, is its “highest priority” in 2019. This plans of launching the first unmanned flight for the mission in December 2020, and the second in July 2021. Following these censorious steps, the final aim of the mission is of carrying a three-member crew to low earth orbit and return them safely to a predefined destination on earth.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced Gaganyaan in his Independence Day address last year. He said that they have resolved it by 2022 when India celebrates 75 years of independence, or maybe even before that, certainly some of our young boys and girls will unfurl the tri-color in space.

A crewed mission is unlike any other challenge ISRO has faced. All its efforts did not involve bringing a spacecraft back into the atmosphere of the earth. ISRO with Gaganyaan not only has to develop the capability of bringing back the spacecraft, but it also has to do so safely without endangering astronaut lives abroad.

By: Preeti Narula

Content: https://thenextweb.com/space/2019/02/05/india-gears-up-for-crewed-space-missions-with-its-new-human-space-flight-center/