The Indian Space Research Organisation is gearing up for a host of activities at the spaceport here, including testing of the crew module in July for its ambitious Gaganyaan mission, Chairman S Somanath said here on Monday. The secretary of the department of space said the space agency was also working for the launch of the synthetic aperture radar mission in association with National Aeronautics Space Agency (NASA).
The NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar Mission) is a joint earth-observing mission between NASA and ISRO with the goal of making global measurements of the causes and consequences of land surface changes using advanced radar imaging.
Talking about future launches, Somanath said the next launch would be a climate and weather observation satellite called ‘INSAT-3Ds’, which would be launched using a GSLV rocket.
“The same rocket (GSLV) is bound to take the NISAR as well. In the coming months we are going to have launches of PSLVs as well as GSLV MkIII “ he said. “The SHAR (Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota) will be abuzz with activities towards all of this.” he said.
Scientists are working on conducting various tests for the ambitious Gaganyaan mission and the agency is coordinating with the Navy and others in this connection, he said.
“We will be launching a test vehicle mission now. Target is to conduct it by July. The vehicle for conducting the test is already here in Satish Dhawan Space Centre here.” he said. This launch would demonstrate how the crew escapes in case of any accident during the Gaganyaan mission, he said.
“The vehicle will be taken to an altitude of 14 km and from there we would create a problem or try to destroy it and see how the crew module escapes. That we have to demonstrate. We are talking to various stakeholders like the Navy.” he said. This mission has to be repeated again and after that there would be an unmanned mission probably next year in which the whole crew module would be taken to orbit and return, he said.
On setting up a launch pad in Kulasekarapattinam in Tamil Nadu about 600 km from Chennai, he said ISRO was almost in the final stages of acquiring 2,000 acres of land. “We will be building a launch pad for a small launch vehicle in Kulasekarapattinam and possible rocket launches for private players in future.
Land acquisition process is almost completed and some more land is yet to be acquired” he said. Somanath said the space agency was under discussion about the launch of the next-generation launch vehicle (NGLV).
“Now is not the right time to discuss it. It is a rocket which we want to be a recoverable stage, and basically (we are) working on liquid and semi-cryogenic technology,” he said.
