'Over 7,200 space mission tests have been completed', says ISRO chief V. Narayanan

Kolkata, May 23 (IANS) Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chief V. Narayanan has said that 7,200 space mission tests have been completed as of now and 3,000 others are still pending by the Indian space agency, highlighting the importance of year 2025, which has been declared the "Gaganyaan" year.

V. Narayanan was speaking at an event in Kolkata on Thursday.

"This year is a very important year for us. We have declared it Gaganyaan year. Before sending the humans, we have planned three uncrewed missions and the first uncrewed mission is planned this year... Till date, more than 7,200 tests have been completed and about 3,000 tests are pending, work is going on 24 hours," he said.

"...As you are aware, this year we had major achievements and accomplishments. On January 6, we rolled out one year's worth of scientific data collected by the Aditya L1 spacecraft. You are all aware that Aditya L1 is one of its kind, and India is one of the four countries to have placed a satellite for studying the Sun. A vast wealth of scientific data was released to the scientific community on January 6. And on January 16, we had another very important and major accomplishment...," the ISRO Chief told IANS.

The Gaganyaan Programme, approved in December 2018, envisages human spaceflight to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and establishing technologies required for a long-term Indian human space exploration endeavour.

V. Narayanan expressed his happiness over the completion of SpaDeX mission.

He asserted that ISRO "accounted for ten kilos of fuel to do this mission".

He also told that a number of missions are planned in 2025 which includes a NASAISRO synthetic aperture radar satellite, which will be launched by India's own launch vehicle.

"Today, we are happy to report that the SpaDeX mission has been successfully completed. We accounted ten kilos of fuel to do this mission, but we did it with only half the fuel and the rest of the fuel is available, and in the coming months, you will hear that a lot of experiments are planned... This year, a number of important missions are planned and there is going to be a NASA-ISRO synthetic aperture radar satellite and it will be launched by our own launch vehicle and we are going to have a commercial mission and a communication satellite for commercial aspects, which we are going to launch", he added.

According to ISRO's official website, the SpaDex mission is a cost-effective technology demonstrator mission that uses two small spacecraft launched by PSLV to demonstrate in-space docking.

The ISRO chief said that by December 2025, the first uncrewed mission to be called as "Vyommitra", followed by two uncrewed missions, will be launched by ISRO.

In contrast, the organisation targets the first human space flight by the first quarter of 2027.

"By December this year, there will be the first uncrewed mission, followed by two uncrewed missions, and we are targeting the first human space flight by the first quarter of 2027. In fact, almost every month this year, a launch is scheduled. The first uncrewed mission with a robot called 'Vyommitra' will be launched by the end of this year," V. Narayanan told reporters.

--IANS

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