India's human space flight may face slight delay: ISRO chief

Chennai : Reeling from Covid 19 impact, India's ambitious human space flight mission Gaganyaan will be "slightly delayed", reports say.

ISRO resumes rocket launch activities from the first week of November, space agency chief K. Sivan said on Monday answering a query at the plenary session of the International Astronautical Congress 2020.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman said India's first human space flight was targeted in August 2022, but owing to Covid-19's impact on the operations, the there would be a slight slip in meeting the mission's target date.

In his Independence Day speech on August 15, 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said an Indian son or daughter would be flying into space under the Gaganyaan mission in the 75th year of Independence in 2022, .

The Gaganyaan mission has advanced well and the country is taking the help of other space-faring nations like Russia for training the astronauts and some other critical aspects, France in the space medical area and is also approaching US space agency NASA, Sivan said.

On resuming rocket launches, he said some missions were delayed as officials were unable to travel to the rocket port from different cities.

Sivan said ISRO is planning to launch its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle C49 (PSLV C49) during the first week of November.

The PSLV C49 rocket will fly with RISAT-2BR2 as the main passenger and about several other third party satellites for a fee.

According to Sivan, international cooperation is the hallmark of India's space activities.

The country has signed about 250 collaboration agreements with about 59 nations.

He said India's international collaborations are a mix-some for getting advanced technologies and some are for helping other space faring nations and pointed out training 60 persons from 23 nations in building nano-satellites.

This report from IANS has been edited