After a rather muted 2021 in terms of satellite launches, Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is gearing up for a number of missions in 2022 including the launch of the first unmanned mission of Gaganyaan.

Gaganyaan Mission

• Gaganyaan is crewed orbital spacecraft intended to be the formative spacecraft of the Indian Human Spaceflight Programme (IHSP).
• The IHSP was initiated in 2007 by ISRO to develop the technology needed to launch crewed orbital spacecraft into low Earth orbit.
• The first uncrewed flight, named Gaganyaan 1, is scheduled to launch no earlier than June 2022 on a GSLV Mark III rocket.
• ISRO had been working on related technologies and it performed a Crew Module Atmospheric Re-entry Experiment and a Pad Abort Test for the mission.
• If completed in meantime, India will become the fourth nation to conduct independent human spaceflight after the Russia, US and China.

Details of the project

• The spacecraft is being designed to carry three people, and a planned upgraded version will be equipped with rendezvous and docking capability.
• In its maiden crewed mission, this capsule will orbit the Earth at 400 km altitude for up to seven days with a two or three-person crew on board.
• This Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) manufactured crew module had its first un-crewed experimental flight in 2014.
• DRDO will provide support for critical human-centric systems and technologies like space-grade food, crew healthcare, radiation measurement and protection, parachutes for the safe recovery of the crew module and fire suppression system.

Other missions this year

• Earth Observation Satellites: EOS-4 and EOS-6
• Flights for Crew Escape System of Gaganyaan
• Chandrayaan-03
• Aditya Ll
• XpoSat

New projects

• Venus mission
• DISHA –a twin aeronomy satellite mission
• TRISHNA, an ISRO-CNES [Centre national d’études spatiales] mission

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