Gaganyaan should proceed with caution, don't want another Boeing incident: ISRO chief

Bengaluru: Although Gaganyaan is ready for launch by the end of the year, we should proceed with caution, said Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman S Somanath on Friday.

Gaganyaan, which is among the projects approved by the Union cabinet on Wednesday, is India's first human mission.

“I don’t want what happened to the Boeing Starliner, so we should be very careful,” added Somanath.

The first test flight of Boeing Starliner spacecraft with astronauts, launched by NASA on June 5 returned to Earth on September 7, but without the astronauts. Due to unforeseen circumstances, the astronauts –Sunitha Williams and Butch Wilmore – were forced to extend their eight-day stay in the International Space to eight months, as they will now be picked up by SpaceX Crew Dragon in February.

Somanath also stressed the importance of exploring Venus.

The Venus Orbiter Mission (VOM) is also among the four projects approved by the Union cabinet and it has been allocated Rs 1,236 crore.

"Tomorrow Earth may become inhabitable due to some reasons. So if you do not study what is happening on Mars and Venus, possibly our future generation will be affected. Venus is also important because India has successfully gone to Mars and the Moon," said Somanath.

As it will take seven years to develop the Next Generation Launch Vehicle (NGLV), the launch vehicle being built by ISRO to replace currently operational systems, since the Venus mission is expected to be launched in March 2028, it will be launched from the existing vehicles, said Somanath.

“Russia, China and Japan are also sending missions to Venus by 2030. So, by 2028, we have decided to launch our Venus mission from Launch Vehicle Mark-3 or LVM3,” he added.

According to him, although Venus is our nearest planet, it is more challenging.

“Though we went to Mars, which is a little far away earlier, Venus is closer, but it is more challenging than Mars. Because the atmosphere of Venus has 100 times more pressure than that of Earth,” Somanath told PTI Videos at the fringes of the press conference.

Venus mission will be India’s second interplanetary mission after the Mars Orbiter Mission that was launched on November 5, 2013, and entered the Martian orbit on September 24, 2014.

Somanath also expressed his delight at the growing popularity of the Space Expo as well as the interest being shown by startups to invest in space sector.

“When I saw some of the stalls today, I was really impressed by the work done by the industries. The transition has already happened. Today, we can see many startups building their own satellites. This is the change we are seeing,” he said.