7 Days In Space For 3 Vyomanauts: Cabinet Approves Rs 10,000 Crore Budget For India’s Human Spaceflight Program

In what comes as a shot in the arm for India’s space ambitions, the Union Cabinet has approved a Rs 10,000 crore budget to fund the indigenous human spaceflight programme ‘Gaganyaan’, which will dispatch three Indians into the space in 2022 for a period of at least seven days, reports PTI.

The development was announced by Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad at a press conference today (28 December). With this mission, India will become the fourth nation to send humans into space, the other three being Russia, the United States and China.

The Gaganyaan project was first revealed to the public by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on India’s 72nd Independence Day this year.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman K Sivan had commented on the announcement, stating that it was a “very, very tight schedule but we are committed to meet the PM's deadline. It is not an ISRO mission but a national mission project and we will achieve it."

Sivan had then mentioned that ISRO had already developed several technologies required for human spaceflight, such as a human crew module, environment control and life support systems.

The space agency will deploy the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III (GSLV MK III) to take three Indians on a spaceflight mission. The Indian astronauts will be called ‘Vyomanauts’ (Vyom means space in Sanskrit).