Gaganyaan’s 1st uncrewed mission ready to launch with half-humanoid robot in Dec: ISRO

New Delhi: The first uncrewed mission of the Gaganyaan human spaceflight mission, G1, is ready to launch with the half-humanoid robot — Vyommitra — and the launch is expected in December, said V. Narayanan, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Thursday.

Speaking at a press briefing in the national capital, he also lauded IAF Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla for his successful mission to the International Space Station — the first ever by an Indian. Shukla is one of the astronauts selected for the crewed Gaganyaan mission.

“The first uncrewed mission, G1, is going to be lifted off by this year’s end, maybe close to December. And in that, the Vyommitra, the half-humanoid, is going to fly,” Narayanan said, while thanking Prime Minister Narendra Modi for announcing the Gaganyaan programme on August 15, 2018.

Lauding the space organisation’s efforts, Narayanan said that ISRO made a lot of accomplishments in the last four months.

“The entire ISRO programme is purely a teamwork of 20,000 employees, 450 industrial partners and 300 academia partners. Today, along with us, we have got the Gaganyatris joining in hand in hand for our programmes”.

Mentioning various programmes of ISRO, he stated: “There is telemedicine, tele-education, television broadcasting, and real-time connecting of something around 8,600 trains, 21,000 shipping vessels are connected”.

Further, the noted rocket scientist said: “ISRO is doing an outstanding job in the area of disaster warning”.

“A total of 13 out of 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals are being supported by ISRO,” he said, while also listing other space achievements like the Aditya L1 Sun mission and the NISAR satellite mission.

“We have made a major breakthrough in Cryogenic engine technology. The tests are going very well, and a lot of indigenisation activities are progressing well.

“Coming to the Aditya L1, this year we have released 13 terabit data,” he said, calling the images of Sun’s orbit taken by the satellite, “fantastic achievement”.

He added that the recently launched NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar Satellite (NISAR) satellite “is healthy and all systems are working well”.

“NISAR, launched on July 30, is jointly realised by NASA, JPL, and ISRO. It is the costliest satellite ever realised in the world, and it was lifted off by the Indian launcher GSLV and placed perfectly in orbit. Today, the satellite’s health is totally perfect, and the antenna, unfurled (after 17 days), is operational. We will share the first pictures in a couple of days.

“In two to three months, we are also going to launch a 6,500 kg communication satellite of the US, on our launch vehicle. To date, 433 satellites of 34 countries have been launched from India,” the ISRO chief said.

IANS