Space station! India’s ambitious plans on track, says Chandrayaan-3 project director

financialexpress.com:

India’s ambitious plans to have its own space station by 2035 are progressing on track, said project director of Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Chandrayaan-3 mission, P Veeramuthuvel on Saturday.

He added that the country also has planned to have an Indian astronaut on the moon by 2040.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi and ISRO chairman have already said that by 2040 we should have an Indian astronaut on the moon and also to have our space station by 2035. These are very ambitious plans that ISRO has taken up and we are working towards that,” he told news agency PTI.

On the Indian Space Research Organisation’s success in bringing back the Propulsion Module (PM) of the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft to the orbit of Earth, the director stated that as far as Chandrayaan-3 is concerned, the rover and lander mission successfully completed one lunar day. ISRO successfully completed the hop-on experiment.

“We used the same engine where we landed, and again we operated the payload for one earth day,” Veeramuthuvel added.

The propulsion module which was supposed to orbit around the Earth’s natural satellite completed all the mission objectives successfully.

ISRO brought the propulsion module back into the orbit of Earth because the space agency got some propellent available in the propulsion module and demonstrated the organisation’s capability by successfully bringing it from orbit of Moon to Earth’s orbit, the scientist said.