The mission to send Indian astronauts to space has been postponed. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has said that the Gaganyaan mission will not be held in 2025 due to security reasons. However, the mission has been announced to be held in 2026.
According to a report in India Today, ISRO Chairman S. Somnath has also announced the launch schedule of ‘Chandrayaan-4’ and ‘NISAR’. The joint India-US mission ‘NISAR’ is going to be held in 2025.
Somnath also said that ISRO is also planning a joint lunar mission with the Japanese space agency JAXA (JAXA). The mission will be called ‘Chandrayaan-5’.
However, ISRO has not yet announced a date for the mission. The first ‘Gagayaan’ project was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 15, 2018, during the Independence Day ceremony.
The then ISRO chairman K Sivan had said that the spacecraft would be launched from the Sriharikota launch pad in 2022. It would carry three Indian astronauts. If the mission is successful, India would be the fourth country after Russia, America and China to send a spacecraft to space for research purposes.
However, the mission was postponed at the last minute. On behalf of ISRO, Somnath informed that the mission would not be launched before 2024 due to safety reasons. However, ISRO would conduct several rehearsals before the actual mission. NASA astronaut Kalpana Chawla’s ‘Columbia’ spacecraft burned up due to friction with the atmosphere due to a problem in its ‘heat shield’ on its way back to Earth. Kalpana and the others lost their lives. In this case, ISRO will proceed with all kinds of precautions.
The ISRO chief said that in recent times, many small and big companies have expressed interest in entering the space field. ISRO is trying its best to help them.
Recently, ‘Chandrayaan 3’ has brought another level of success to India. India has become the first country to land a spacecraft on the south pole of the moon. After that success, the country’s researchers and scientists are not looking to make any mistakes in the next mission.
