India to invest £1.7 billion to send astronauts in space by 2015

India has finally announced its plans to launch its first manned space mission in 2015.

This would be the first Indian mission where in an Indian astronaut would walk on the moon using an Indian spacecraft.

Senior officials have earmarked £1.7 billion to fund the program.

India’s Planning Commission, chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has agreed to hand over billions of dollars to make it happen. With the success of this mission, India would join the elite club, which presently includes China, US and Russia, that has sent a man to the moon using their own spacecraft.

ISRO chairman G. Madhavan Nair explained that the mission would involve ISRO’s 3-ton capsule to orbit the Earth at 248 miles in altitude for up to seven days with a 2 member crew on board. The capsule has a capacity to carry three persons and is and is equipped with a rendezvous and docking capability.The spacecraft will splashdown in the Indian Ocean after completion of the mission.

The necessary mission infrastructure includes a new launch pad at ISRO’s Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota and a programme to train the astronauts for the mission. ISRO’s spokesman S.Satish said, “We have to establish a facility for training the astronaut, then we have to build a human space capsule – so these are some of the major technological challenges.”

The astronaut training is expected to be conducted in Bangalore.

ISRO chairman G Madhavan Nair said, “We zeroed in on Bangalore after identifying several favorable aspects. We have an aviation medicine institute in the city which will significantly contribute for the astronaut training.” A site of 140 acres beyond the greenfield Bengaluru International Airport has been selected for the training.

The whole project will also receive assistance from Russia as far as the crew selection and training are concerned. As a part of the agreement signed between India and Russia, an Indian astronaut will first go on a space mission on a Russian spacecraft.

This apparently will be followed by the Indian manned flight into the space in 2015.

After the success of the unmanned mission, Chandrayan-1, in 2008, Indian scientists at ISRO started working on a manned mission to the moon. “We had a good meeting. The general inference is that ISRO has done an expert job and it needs to be supported. The Planning Commission will support it,”
said Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia who had a two-hour meeting on February 20, 2009, with top ISRO scientists and officials
of the Department of Space.

The full funding for the project is yet to be done but the work has already begun with the $19.4 million allocation by the government to ISRO in ISRO’s 40.7 billion rupee ($834 million) budget for 2007-2008.

To make the project a success, scientists are still working on some of the key aspects of the spacecraft, namely a man-rated launcher featuring safety and reliability enhancements, life support systems, rescue and recovery systems, a robotic manipulator, and new mission-management and control systems.

The MoU signed by G. Madhavan Nair and his Russian counterpart Anatoly Perminov also allows India to redesign the Soyuz space capsule of the Russian agency for the mission similar to the Soyuz redesigning by the Chinese to develop their spacecraft ‘Shenzhou’.

S.Satish also said the astronaut capsule would launch atop a modified version of ISRO’s Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mark 2, currently under development. The GSLV Mark 2 features an indigenously developed cryogenic upper-stage engine; the Mark 1 variant currently in use has a Russian-supplied upper stage engine.

The first test launch of the standard GSLV Mark 2 launcher is scheduled for 2009.

The success of the mission would mark another milestone for ISRO, which has been receiving support from the government despite the issues between the major parties like BJP and Congress. The mission hopes to build a strong base for further research.