India to send men to space

Government approves $382m budget for two-man mission

India is poised to join the ranks of space giants Russia, the United States and China, after its government approved the budget for sending two astronauts into space in 2015. Last year, India became the third Asian country, after China and Japan, to send an unmanned moon mission.

Now, the government has given the green light for a manned space mission, allocating a budget of 12.4 billion rupees (S$382 million), according to Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the planning commission, which formulates the country's five-year development plans.

The decision was taken at a meeting last week with top officials of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and officials of the Department of Space, newspaper reports said.

'We had a good meeting. The general inference is that ISRO has done an expert job and it needs to be supported. The planning commission will support it,' Dr Ahluwalia was quoted by the Indian Express newspaper as saying. The project would be executed in two phases: an unmanned flight in 2013-14, and a manned space flight in 2014-15.

'We intend to put two persons in the vehicle and launch them into space for seven days in an orbit of 275km,' Dr K. Radhakrishnan, director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre and a member of the Space Commission, was quoted as saying by the Indian Express.

India has already demonstrated its capability in space flight by launching dozens of satellites and the unmanned moon mission in October last year that put a 1,400kg lunar probe into orbit.
The spacecraft Chandrayan-1 was sent to study the moon surface for evidence of water and precious metals over two years.

'We are already in space. We are better placed than when the Americans did it (manned space flight) earlier,' said Professor Yash Pal, a former director of the Space Applications Centre.

The ISRO had said earlier that the successful launch of the unmanned moon mission last year had given Indian space scientists the confidence to undertake a manned mission to the moon.