If successful, India will join a select club of countries that have brought back lunar soil, after the United States, the former Soviet Union and, most recently, China.
Underlining this commitment on Friday, S. Somanath, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), said the premier space agency will also start launching the first modules of India’s own space station by 2028 and operate debris-free satellites avoiding collisions by 2030.
Somanath, along with Union Minister of State in the Department of Space Jitendra Singh, spoke at the inaugural celebration of the National Space Day in New Delhi on Friday. The National Space Day was announced last year by Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the successful landing of the Chandrayaan-3 lunar mission near the lunar south pole region.
To mark the occasion, Isro also published its major scientific achievements in Nature, a peer-reviewed British journal, on August 21.
“We have made steady progress as a space-faring nation since the inception of our space programme in 1969. Now, India is looking to go beyond its soft landing by bringing back lunar soil for further experiments during the Chandrayaan-4 mission, which we have planned for 2027. We are also working on the first modules of the Bharatiya Antariksha Station (Indian Space Station) by 2028, and by 2030, we will look to ensure that we do not pollute space and avoid all collisions by ensuring that our decommissioned satellites fall back to Earth,” Somanath said.
Speaking about the scientific achievements published in Nature, Anil Prabhakar, Director, Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) affiliated with the Department of Space (DoS), said, “One of the key achievements of Chandrayaan-3 was measuring the chemical composition of the lunar south polar region. Our mission was one of the first to closely observe the Aitken Basin, which is the largest known crater in the solar system.”
Somanath added that the studies “are aimed at better understanding our moon, including its origin and how it has evolved over time.”
Looking ahead, Isro’s list of projects includes an ambitious goal of landing a manned spacecraft on the Moon. “The Gaganyaan mission is progressing at a steady pace and Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla will lead us on our manned space mission by 2040. The first unmanned trials of Gaganyaan will begin by the end of this year,” Somanath said.
The minister added that India’s space capabilities “leave the door open for international collaborations with the US and other countries as and when required, but we have developed indigenous end-to-end capabilities through Isro that have ensured our cost per space mission is the lowest in the world.”
Singh also said that a ₹The Rs 1,000-crore space venture capital fund, which was announced on July 23 in the Union Budget, is being worked on at the ministerial level. “Going forward, multiple stakeholders will evaluate the sectors and entities that will benefit from the fund, and a professional fund manager will be appointed to manage it. We will also evaluate how the government, including ISRO, can play its role in promoting the private sector,” he said.
India’s breakthrough in space travel came with Squadron Commander Rakesh Sharma’s spaceflight aboard Soyuz-T11 in April 1984, which was part of the erstwhile Soviet space programme. Interestingly, India’s team of four astronauts also underwent initial training at Roscosmos (Russia), before further training in India. From the very beginning, India’s biggest achievement, apart from the Chandrayaan series mentioned above, was Mangalyaan, which made India the first Asian nation to orbit Mars and the only nation to achieve this on its first attempt.
Last month, Somanath said ISRO was also in the process of enhancing its indigenous capabilities. “We recognise many areas of improvement; for example, we need a new heavy launcher to cater to Gaganyaan and our space station. For this, a technical and funding design model for ISRO’s Next Generation Launch Vehicle (NGLV) has already been prepared,” he said.
The NGLV, which was unveiled in Delhi on Friday, could be developed under a public-private partnership model, top Isro executives said, which could boost the private space sector in India. The minister underlined that India is currently home to 300 space startups across various domains.
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