A PSLV rocket carrying the X-Ray Polarimetry Satellite (XPoSat) lifts off from the Sriharikota spaceport, January 1, 2024.
| Photo Credit: ANI/ISRO

With no major space missions slated for 2024, the Department of Space has recieved only a nominal hike of 4% in its allocation in the Interim Union Budget for 2024-25, from ₹12,545 crore to ₹13,043 crore. The Indian space programme will spend much of the year on pre-launch testing milestones for the lunar exploration (Chandrayaan) and human spaceflight (Gaganyaan) missions, and some other projects.

In 2023, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) launched and successfully executed its long-awaited Chandrayaan-3 mission, to soft-land a robotic instrument on the moon. ISRO also launched the Aditya-L1 mission to study the sun and the XPoSat — short for ‘X-ray Polarimetry Satellite’ — mission to track and study neutron stars and black holes from space. India also signed the Artemis Accords to participate in the United States’ multilateral programme to return humans to the moon by 2025.

Also read: Budget 2024 live updates

The major launches slated for 2024 include an uncrewed Gaganyaan test flight, the third developmental flight of the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle, and the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar mission. ISRO scientists and engineers have also been working on propellants, satellite propulsion systems, new launch vehicles, and technology transfer to the industry.

Spaceflight startups may benefit

In her Budget speech, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a corpus of ₹1 lakh crore, with five-decade interest-free loans, to boost private sector investment in research and development. While the details are not clear, India’s nascent private spaceflight sector and its 200 or so startups are expected to benefit from this infusion. The revenue expenditure of IN-SPACe, the nodal agency setup by the Union Cabinet in 2020 to oversee the activities of this sector, also increased 24%.

Similarly, revenue for space technologies — which includes work on Gaganyaan and the development of systems for new launch vehicles and spaceflight missions — increased 27%.

Also read: Where does the money come from and where is it allocated?

The 8% increase in the allocation for space technologies is, however, out of keeping with the work planned on the next two missions in the Chandrayaan programme: Chandrayaan 4 and the Lunar Polar Exploration mission, and a partially reusable launch vehicle, among others. Then again, the Department of Space underutilised its allocation for space technologies in 2023-2024 by more than ₹1,500 crore.

Finally, expenditure for INSAT satellite systems was halved from ₹531 crore in 2023-2024 to ₹276 crore in 2024-2025, with capital expenditure dropping by 60%. ISRO is expected to launch the INSAT-3DS meteorological satellite later this month.

New Delhi:

It’s going to be a flight of failure, which will set up ISRO for success.

Attempting to prepare for every possibility, which is now a part of its ethos, the Indian Space Research Organisation will carry out an abort test for the human space mission, Gaganyaan, on Saturday. 

A similar fail-safe approach had been taken for Chandrayaan-3 and had helped ISRO script history by making India the first country to land nearer the south pole of the Moon in August. The stakes, though, are much higher this time because the lives of humans will be involved. 

Speaking exclusively to NDTV, Dr Unnikrishnan Nair, director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, which is an ISRO research centre, said the most important thing for the agency in the Gaganyaan mission is the safety of the crew.

“The first mission is demonstrating the crew escape system during flight. We should ensure that, at any stage during the ascent phase, if anything goes wrong with the vehicle, the safety of the crew is ensured. The crew escape system, which will operate during the first stage of the vehicle, has to work in different conditions,” he said.

The test is scheduled for 8 am from the first launchpad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. The crew escape system, which will have the unpressurised crew module housing the astronauts during the actual Gaganyaan flight, will be fixed atop the test vehicle. 

“When the vehicle reaches an altitude of 12 km and achieves the transonic condition, the thrust of the vehicle will be terminated and motors of the escape system will be activated. That will take the crew module plus crew escape system to an altitude of about 17 km. At that altitude, the crew module will be released from the escape system,” Dr Nair said. 

He said the crew module has been designed in a way that it can turn by itself and orient itself in the required direction. Once that is done, parachutes will be deployed and the module will drop slowly into the sea about 10 km from the launch pad. The crew escape system and the launch vehicle will also fall into the sea, but at a distance from the crew module.

The entire test is expected to last about nine minutes.

Gaganyaan, which is expected to launch in 2025, aims to take a crew of 3 members to an orbit of 400 km for a 3-day mission and bring them back safely to Earth by landing in Indian waters.