Center approves Rs 10,000 crore for human space mission ‘Gaganyaan’ 

New Delhi: The Union Cabinet, on Friday, approved a Rs 10,000 crore budget for Indian Space Research Organization’s ambitious Gaganyaan programme, which will send three Indian astronauts to space for up to seven days by 2022.

Announcing this at a news conference, Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said, “The Union Cabinet has approved the Gaganyaan project under which a three-member crew will be sent to space for at least seven days.”

The project was first announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech this year at the Red Fort and Isro has been pushed for its implementation since then.

The space agency has already started the process of selecting experiments that will be performed in the low-Earth orbit (LEO), where it will send the astronauts.

Isro chairman K Sivan said expressed his confidence that the agency will be able to achieve the feat by 2022 and said the agency was working on various technologies for the mission.

He said, as part of the plan, Isro has planned two unmanned flights testing all the systems in 2020 and 2021.

 The process to select the astronauts is yet to start. Isro is expected to work with the Indian Air Force towards this. The Institute of Aerospace Medicine will be taking the responsibility for selecting the Astronauts.

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