The novel coronavirus has delayed the India’s first manned space mission, Gaganyaan, by a year. “That (Ganganyaan mission) will be delayed because of Covid,” Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) chairperson K Sivan told reporters. “We are targeting for some time next year-end or the subsequent year,” he replied on being asked about the two unmanned missions that were to precede a Vyomnaut (as the Indian astronaut will be termed) being sent to space.
Previously, before the Pandemic outbreak, the first of these was scheduled for December 2020, the second for June 2021, before the manned mission on December 2021. “The pandemic has impacted most of the missions planned for this year and the next, including the Gaganyaan mission. A committee is currently reviewing all the missions and where we stand but there is no official timeline yet. This is because, other than Isro, many industries are involved in these missions and they are not working at 100% capacity yet. Once the industries apprise us of their timeline, we will be able to decide on the official dates for the mission,” an ISRO official said.
Due to the delay, the mission will miss the deadline of August 2022 set by PM in his Independence Day address of 2018. The pandemic has also delayed other big-ticket missions that Isro had planned for the year, including India’s first solar mission , Aditya L1, actually scheduled for mid-2020. Other than these, Isro was to send a lander-rover mission to moon either by the end of 2020 or the beginning of 2021. “We have not yet fixed the schedule (for the Chandrayaan-3 launch),” Sivan told reporters. ISRO is currently 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 due to the condition that the planet has to be at its closest point to Earth at the time of launch.
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