New Delhi: The most touted India’s first manned space flight, Gaganyaan is slated to take 3 persons on board to take them to space for seven days and after it reaches space, the spacecraft will be placed in low earth orbit of 300-400 km.

While talking about the details of the future programme at a press conference, Minister of State for Atomic Energy and Space, Jitendra Singh said that the GSLV Mk III will be utilized to launch the Gaganyaan mission. The three-stage heavy-lift launch vehicle has got the necessary payload capability and because of this reason, the vehicle was chosen for the launch.

Besides that, two unmanned Gaganyaan missions are also in the plan which will be undertaken before sending humans into space for the first time from India.

“The total programme is expected to be completed before 2022 with the first unmanned flight within 30 months. The mission will aim to send a three-person crew to space for a period of seven days. The spacecraft will be placed in a low earth orbit of 300-400 km. The programme is expected to cost less than Rs. 10,000 crores,” Mr Singh said.

The mission Gaganyaan was for the first time announced by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his speech on Independence Day address. In the speech, the Prime Minister promised that by the year 2022 or before that, space will see Indian flag unfurling int the space by some of the young boys and girls.

According to Mr. Singh, the complex programme will prove to be national endeavor with the partnership of ISRO along with the participation of academia, industry and other government and private agencies as stakeholders.

“The mission will make India the fourth nation in the world to launch a Human Spaceflight Mission,” Mr Singh said.

To increase the pace of work for the special programme, ISRO may also weigh an option of seeking collaborations with other space agencies from friendly countries and advanced space programmes, he said.

Gaganyaan is planned as an Indian crewed orbital spacecraft with the soleGaganyaan mission intention of placing Indians into space. The capacity of the spacecraft is three people. During the programme, the maiden crewed mission, weighing 3.7-tonne capsule, will orbit the Earth from a distance of 400 km in the space for a total of seven days with a three-person crew on board.

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