India Will Send Man To Space By December 2021 Using Indigenous Rocket: ISRO Chief K Sivan

ISRO chairman K Sivan on Saturday said that India is moving ahead to meet its target of sending a man to space by December 2021 and it will be carried out by our own rocket. He said that though ISRO’s plan to soft-land Chandrayaan-2’s ‘Vikram’ module on the lunar surface did not go as per the script, it will have no bearing with on the ‘Gaganyaan’ mission. However, he asserted that the Chandrayaan-2 mission has achieved 98 per cent of its objectives.

“By December 2020, we will have our first unmanned mission of human spaceplane. The second unmanned human space plane, we target for July 2021,” Sivan said addressing the eighth convocation of IIT, Bhubaneswar.

“By December 2021, the first Indian will be carried by our own rocket ... This is the target ISRO is working for,” he added.

Meanwhile, scientists are working hard to establish contact with lander ‘Vikram’. Sivan also said Chandrayaan-2 orbiter is doing well and performing scheduled science experiments.

Stating Chandrayaan-2’s orbiter will give data for seven and half years, he said all technologies of the moon mission have proved accurate except for the soft landing.

“Why we are saying Chandrayaan-2 achieved 98 per cent success is because of two objectives—one is science and the other technology demonstration. In the case of technology demonstration, the success percentage was almost full,” he told reporters.

The space scientist said while the country may be perceived poor by many people it occupies the first position in the world for sending remote sensing satellites.

Despite the progress made over the last half a century, there are many unsolved issues of poverty and hunger, health and sanitation and clean drinking water, he said and called upon IITians to come forward to help solve them.

“As Gandhiji said local problems need local solutions,” Sivan added.

Sivan asked students to take calculated risks and innovate. “If you are not taking a chance, there is no chance of achieving anything significant in life. Take calculated risks. When you take calculated risks, you save yourself from problematic areas”.

Stressing on innovation, he said it comes from a high level of risk and failure. “I need not tell you how many times Edison failed in inventing the light bulb or how many times ISRO failed in the launch of our launch vehicles. But this failure did not become an obstacle. We (ISRO) use these failures as learning opportunities,” the ISRO chief said.

With PTI Inputs