NEW DELHI – India plans to establish its own “very small” space station inthe next decade as the country gears up for a first manned mission beyondearth.
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief K. Sivan said Thursday thatthe ambitious project would follow a successful launch of a manned spaceflight scheduled by 2022.
“Our space station is going to be very small… useful to carry outexperiments,” Sivan told reporters in New Delhi.
“We are not having a big plan of sending humans on tourism and otherthings,” he added.
A space station is capable of hosting crew members for years on end, andprovides facilities for experiments and support vehicles to dock.
India’s first manned space mission — named Gaganyaan — is due to takeplace by 2022, in time to commemorate 75 of years of the country’sindependence from Britain.
It will have two or three astronauts on a maximum seven-day mission.
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The Indian announcement comes a day after the country unveiled an unmannedmoon lander expected to be launched on July 15 for a touchdown on the lunarsurface around September 6.
India successfully sent a first lunar mission to space in 2008, playing acrucial role in the discovery of water molecules on the moon.
The country has made giant strides on its space journey in recent years andhas been a pioneer in low-cost technology.
It sent a mission to Mars in 2014 for just $74 million — a fraction of the$671 million spent by the US space agency NASA.
ISRO also plans to send a mission to study the Sun in 2020, and to Venus by2023. -APP/AFP
