India Will Launch Its Own Space Station Completely Made In India; Refuses To Join International Space Station

It looks like the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has no stopping. Just after confirming the date of descent of its most complex mission, Chandryaan-2, ISRO Chief K.Sivan now confirms that India is planning to launch its own space station and that it wouldn’t be joining hands any other country or the International Space Station (ISS).

A space station is a spacecraft capable of supporting crew members, designed to remain in space for an extended period of time and for other spacecraft to dock.

This will be an extension to the Gaganyaan programme. It will be India’s first manned mission into space.

The Work Will Commence on 75th Independence Day of India

ISRO is swiftly moving forward with the nation to bolster its status as a leader in space technologies and inspire the young minds to take an interest in scientific fields. Yesterday, the ISRO Chief K.Sivan announced that among the list of missions ISRO has promised to deliver by 2028, it is planning to launch India’s first and own space station, which will be an extension of the Gaganyaan mission. The time frame for launch is 5-7 years after Gaganyaan, by 2030.

The Gaganyaan mission aims to send an Indian crew to space in 2022 and in order to sustain them for a longer term, India is planning to develop its own space station. The modalities for it will be worked out after the first manned mission, Gaganyaan scheduled for the eve of August 2022, just in time to commemorate 75 years of independence. ISRO will submit a detailed report on how it intends to set up the space station to the government.

India is targeting 2030 as the date to launch a 20 tonne space station, which be used to conduct micro-gravity experiments. It will be a small module, envisaged to weigh 20 tonnes and serve as a facility where astronauts can stay for 15-20 days, and it would be placed in an orbit 400 km above earth. ISRO isn’t planning for space tourism.

ISRO Will Not Join Hands with Any Other Country

ISRO says there will be no collaboration with any other country for this project. The only countries to have their own space stations are US, China, Russia and the International Space Station (ISS). The International Space Station is a habitable artificial satellite in low Earth orbit. Currently, it’s the largest and the only one fully functional space station in the Earth’s lower orbit. It is consists of European Space Agency, United States (NASA), Japan (JAXA), Canada (CSA) and Russia (Roscosmos).

ISRO isn’t interested in collaborating with the ISS, as India is self sustainable. India successfully sent its first lunar mission to Mars in 2014, costing just $74 million (about Rs 514 crore), which is just a fraction of $671 million spent by the US owned NASA.