Giant Leap into Space

Yunus Dar

In 2019 India took a monumental leap in the area of space exploration. India’s premier space agency, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced it was sending astronauts into space, as early as 2022. The ISRO chief K. Sivan announced the establishment of India’s first Human Space Flight Centre (HSFC) to train astronauts and set up the necessary infrastructure for India’s first manned space mission - the Gaganyaan.

ISRO’s Gaganyaan module being revealed

He said the Gaganyaan programme approval will be a major milestone for ISRO, and a brilliant start to 2019. The programme will usher in a major expansion of ISRO, as the exercise will involve selecting the crew, training them for spaceflight, ensuring safe return to earth and creating life support systems for a successful mission. The ISRO chief also confirmed the date of India’s second mission to the moon, Chandrayaan-2, which will be before April-end.

Dr K. Kasturirangan, former chairman, ISRO inaugurated HSFC on 30 January 2019 at ISRO headquarter campus in Bengaluru. A full-scale model of Gaganyaan’s crew module was also unveiled at the event.

1. Sivan declared HSFC as top priority for ISRO, and said the management structure has been put in place to realise the objective. HSFC shall be responsible for implementation of Gaganyaan project which involves end-to-end mission planning, development of engineering systems for crew survival in space, crew selection and training and also pursue activities for sustained human space flight missions. HSFC will take support of the existing ISRO centres to implement the first development flight of Gaganyaan under Human Space Flight Programme. S. Unnikrishnan Nair is the founder director of HSFC and R. Hutton is the project director of Gaga