Gaganyaan’s manned space flight mission delayed due to COVID-19 pandemic

Gaganyaan, India’s first manned space flight mission, will be delayed because of COVID-19, says ISRO chairman Kailasavadivoo Sivan. This mission was scheduled for December 2021.

The ISRO is working on the Gaganyaan project for demonstrating human space flight capability to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) with three crew members in orbit and safely recovering them after the mission. GSLV MkIII, ISRO’s heavy lift launcher, is identified for the mission and the process for human rating of this rocket is in progress. The high thrust solid propellant strap-on boosters S200 play an impotant role in the human-rated GSLV MkIII. Many new design features have been introduced in the hardware.

Gaganyaan’s two uncrewed missions were sheduled for launch in December 2020 and July 2021. “We are targeting for sometime next year-end or the subsequent year,” Sivan said. He highlighted that work on the Chandrayaan-3 mission, comprising a lander, and rover is in progress.

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In regards to the proposed orbiter mission to Venus – Shukrayaan, Sivan said ISRO is yet to finalize the payloads. The space agency has shortlisted 20 space-based experiment proposals for the Shukrayaan mission to study the planet for more than four years. Sources said it includes collaborative contributions from Russia, France, Sweden and Germany. In September, the ISRO had said that the space agency will launch its Venus mission in 2025 with the French space agency CNES set to participate in it. CNES in an official statement had said that in the domain of space exploration, France will be taking part in ISRO’s mission to Venus, scheduled for launch in 2025. CNES will coordinate and prepare the French contribution, the first time a French payload will be flown on an Indian exploration mission. Furthermore, CNES and ISRO have set up a working group focused on cooperation in the field of human spaceflight.

India and France are also working on ISRO’s human space mission Gaganyaan project.