NEW DELHI, Dec 7: India’s most of the space programmes including the mission to send the first man to the space are likely to be delayed due to the prevailing Corona pandemic.
News agency reports quoting top officials of the Indian Space Research Organisation said the reason for affecting the space missions’ time-frame was the nature of work that precede sending a shuttle to space. “Space activity cannot be done through work from home. Each and every one of the space engineers has to be available in labs, industries, integration areas, as well as the field. Each engineer, technician, tech assistant has to come all from different centres and work together for a launch. Hardware from different parts of the country has to be transported to SHAR (the launch site),” the official was quoted as saying.
Among the projects to be delayed was India’s first human space flight mission “Gaganyaan” which was likely to be put off at least by a year from the original schedule of December 2021 ahead of the Prime Minister’s deadline. Narendra Modi had set the deadline for the first manned space mission when in his Independence Day address of 2018 the PM had said an Indian astronaut would be sent to space before the country celebrated its 75th year of Independence in 2022.
“That (Gaganyaan mission) will be delayed because of Covid,” the Official was quoted as saying. The time schedule for the two crewless missions before an astronaut was send to space were being revised to for some time next year-end or the subsequent year. The first of these was originally scheduled in the current month and the second by June 2021,
The pandemic has also delayed other big-ticket missions that ISRO had planned for the year, including India’s first solar mission – Aditya L1 – scheduled for mid-2020.
Apart from the solar mission, ISRO was to also send a lander-rover mission to moon either by 2020-end or 2021 beginning. “We have not yet fixed the schedule (for the Chandrayaan-3 launch),” the official said.
The space agency is reviewing all its future missions, including the Venus mission that had been planned for June 2023. If missed, the next launch window would be after 19 months when the planet is closest to the Earth.
(Manas Dasgupta)