Indian on the moon by 2040? ISRO chief spells out hopes, challenges | India News
Indian on the moon by 2040? ISRO chief spells out hopes, challenges | India News
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Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman S Somanath Monday said that the space agency wants to land an Indian on the moon by 2040.
“We need to create a technology science roadmap for a zero-gravity environment in space. When we looked at the type of experiments that we want to do in the Gaganyaan mission… at least five of them have been shortlisted… they are not very exciting experiments for me. Along with this mission, we must have an expanded capability for the moon mission. We must have continuous access to the moon as well. And finally, what we want to have is… a human… an Indian… landing on the moon by 2040,” he said.
He added that a mission to the moon would not “just happen by an accident”, and would require “a continuous exercise of missions to the moon and then expanding knowledge on the moon in a substantial manner”.
“It is not going to be a low-cost exercise. Sending humans to the moon… we need to develop launcher capabilities, laboratories and simulation systems. It cannot be done just once. It needs to be done multiple times. Only then it will be possible to have a human mission from India to the moon,” he said.
The ISRO chief said there had been a resurgence of moon exploration across the globe. “All this must be well understood in the context of others doing it, because many other nations are also going to the moon. I think you know (there is) renewed interest in the US, in China and various other nations,” he said.
Stressing on a long-term vision for space exploration, he said that human access to space must be enhanced substantially. “We must have the space station (Bharatiya Antariksha Station)… We should be placed in orbit by 2028 in the first module and the full module should be completed by 2035, which has capability to have human habitation and stay for a longer duration,” he said.
He also said plans were being discussed and debated for “interplanetary missions” such as the Venus Orbiter Mission and the Mars Lander. “When you look at Venus, its atmosphere, surface topography, the dust, volcanism, huge clouds and lightning – I think all these are worth exploring. Similar is the possibility of landing on Mars…,” he said.
He said the space agency was also discussing a lunar sample return mission, where the aim would be to collect samples from the lunar surface (permanently shadowed region in lunar South Pole) and return the samples safely to Earth for scientific studies.
On the Chandrayaan 3 mission, he said, “This mission was very uniquely placed after the debacle we had during Chandrayaan 2… The real cause of the problem came out in a strange random experiment… an anomaly, and if we had not corrected that, it would have caused problems in Chandrayaan 3.”
Somanath was speaking on ‘Scientific and Exploration Missions: Opportunities for Scientific Communities in India’ at the National Space Science Symposium’ in Goa.
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