India Will Have Own Space Station by 2035, Will Send Man to Moon by 2040: PM Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, chairing a high-level meeting on the progress of India’s Gaganyaan Mission on Tuesday, said that India will have its own space station by 2035, and aims to send man to moon by 2040.

Prime Minister outlined the future of India’s space exploration endeavours as he was presented a comprehensive overview of the Gaganyaan mission by the Department of Space. "Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the ISRO chairman have already said that by 2040 we should have an Indian astronaut on the moon and also to have our space station by 2035. These are very ambitious plans that ISRO has taken up and we are working towards that,” Project Director of ISRO's Chandrayaan-3 mission, P Veeramuthuvel told PTI.

Indian Space Research Organisation [ISRO] told Prime Minister that around 20 major tests as well as three uncrewed missions of Human Rated Launch Vehicle are lined up for ISRO. The space agency informed that the first demonstration flight of the Crew Escape System Test Vehicle is scheduled for October 21.

Prime Minister Modi said that India is working to achieve its ambitious space plans of constructing its own space station by the year 2035, and send an Indian astronaut to the moon by 2040. ISRO has been making strides and progressing on the work to be done to achieve that feat, Veeramuthuvel said.

The latter commented on ISRO’s success in bringing the Propulsion Module (PM) of the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft to Earth’s orbit, saying that “as far as Chandrayaan-3 is concerned, the lander and rover mission successfully completed one lunar day.” He added, "We successfully completed the hop-on experiment wherein we used the same engine that we used for landing and again operated the payload for one earth day.” 

The propulsion module that orbited around the moon has successfully completed all the missions, said Veeramuthuvel. “We brought the propulsion module back to earth’s orbit because we got some propellent available in the propulsion module and demonstrated (our capability) by successfully bringing it from moon’s orbit to earth’s orbit,” he furthermore added.

Prime Minister bestowed  'astronaut wings' to the four astronauts for the Gaganyaan Mission at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) at Thumba near the Kerala state capital as he announced the launch of PSLV Integration Facility (PIF) at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota; new 'Semi-cryogenics Integrated Engine and stage Test facility' at ISRO Propulsion Complex at Mahendragiri; and 'Trisonic Wind Tunnel' at VSSC, Thiruvananthapuram.