NEW DELHI – India aims to send an astronaut to the Moon by 2040, the government has said.
The country’s space goals also include plans for a space station by 2035.
India’s space agency has carried out the first in a series of tests flights ahead of its planned mission to take astronauts into space in 2025.
The Gaganyaan spacecraft was launched on Saturday from Sriharikota.
This was the day’s second attempt – the first was put on hold five seconds before the scheduled launch time.
The test was conducted to demonstrate whether the crew could safely escape the rocket in case it malfunctioned.
“I am very happy to announce the successful accomplishment of the TV-D1 (Test Vehicle Demonstration 1) mission,” S Somanath, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (Isro), said after the launch as his colleagues cheered and applauded.
The successful launch will now pave the way for other unmanned missions, including sending a robot into space next year.
Sending a manned mission with three astronauts into low-Earth orbit will happen only after the successful completion of all these tests – and as the government announced last week, it will most likely happen in 2025.
Named after the Sanskrit word for craft or vehicle to the sky, the Gaganyaan project has been developed at the cost of $1bn). It aims to send the astronauts to an orbit of 400km and bring them back after three days. If it succeeds, India will become only the fourth country to send a human into space after the Soviet Union, the US and China.
But before that, the space agency Isro had to demonstrate that the capsule carrying humans could safely return home. And that is what Saturday’s flight – called Flight Test Vehicle Abort Mission-1 (or TV-D1) by Isro – did.
After the launch, a series of parachutes were deployed as the module began its descent to help ensure a safe touchdown in the waters of Bay of Bengal, about 10km from Sriharikota coast.
According to Isro’s website, the Indian navy would be waiting at a safe distance with a ship and a team of divers who will recover the module and bring it safely back to shore. (BBC)
