India plans its own space station

New Delhi, June 13

India today unveiled plans to set up its own space station to sustain its ambitious programme after successfully completing the first human in space flight by 2022. The programme also includes missions to planet Venus and solar study mission Aditya L1.

Drawing contours of the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) determined push, Chairman K Sivan said here that after Gaganyaan, the human in space mission, the organisation plans to have the country’s own small space station with the capsule capable of staying for 15 to 20 days.

“We have to sustain the Gaganyaan programme after the launch of the human space mission. In this context, India is planning to have its own space station,” Dr Sivan said, a day after providing details of Chandrayaan-II. He also spoke about Aditya — L1, which would aim to study Sun’s corona and its impact on climatic changes. — TNS

• India’s station won’t envisage any foreign collaboration 
• Likely to be used to conduct microgravity experiments
• Preliminary plan is to send astronauts for 15-20 days
• Specific details to emerge after Gaganyaan is launched
• 20 tonne the space station is estimated to weigh
• 2030  is the target year for the station’s launch

Who all have it 

• US, Russia, Japan, Canada and a consortium of European nations own International Space Station 
• China is on its way to have its own mission by 2022

IN THE WORKS: VENUS MISSION

ISRO is planning to launch two other missions: Aditya-L1 to study the Sun will be launched in 2020 and mission to Venus in mid-2023

Small Module  

Our space station is going to be very small. We will be launching a small module and that will be used for carrying out microgravity experiments. —K Sivan, ISRO chairman