India’s crewed space program will fly this year, after missing 2022 and 2025 targets

India plans the first launch of its crewed space program this year and has expanded its orbital ambitions to include operating a space station by 2035. India's crewed space program is called Gaganyaan and has already missed deadlines to fly in 2022 and 2025. The nation's space research organization (ISRO) agency and government did not say anything about the future Gaganyaan schedule after last year's deadline passed without a launch. That silence ended earlier this week, when ISRO Chairman Dr V. Narayanan used the occasion of India's third annual National Space Day to reveal that testing of the rocket and crew module to be used by Gaganyaan missions is almost complete, and the first of three test missions will launch this year. The test flights will use India's LVM3 launcher, which ISRO has flown nine times without failure. The version ISRO will use for Gaganyaan missions is rated for human use thanks to the inclusion of a crew escape system equipped with solid-fuel motors designed to speed Vyomanauts - the Sanskrit-derived word India has unofficially adopted for its astronauts -to safety. The Gaganyaan crew module is built to carry three Vyomanauts and spend three days in a 400km orbit before splashing down into Indian waters. ISRO has previously said it will launch a robot on at least one Gaganyaan test mission. It's unclear if that's still the plan. The aerospace agency has also not said when it plans to launch its second and third test flights, or a first crewed mission. If India can put Vyomanauts in orbit it will become just the fourth country to do so on its own vehicle - after Russia, the USA, and China. Dr Narayanan and other officials and government figures used this year's Space Day to tease other future initiatives, one of which is putting an Indian space station into orbit around 2035. More involvement from private space companies was also on the agenda, perhaps as manufacturers of the launchers ISRO uses. If India chooses that path, it will mimic the USA's current approach, which sees NASA make just one vehicle - the ultra-expensive Space Launch System - and contract its other launches to commercial launch companies. Japan's space agency uses a slightly different approach, defining specs for its vehicles and contracting industrial giants like Mitsubishi to make them, but then runs its own missions under its own name. (R)