ISRO’s new chief Somanath: Space sector reforms and growth of India’s space economy topmost priorities
The newly appointed Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), S Somanath said that ‘Gaganyaan’, the ambitious project will put a human crew in space and is another key objective. The space agency expects that the mission would help lay the robust foundation for a sustainable human flight program in the long run.
S Somnath is known for his contributions to launch vehicle design, particularly in the areas of launch vehicle systems engineering, structural design, structural dynamics, and pyrotechnics. He is keen on space sector reforms and the growth of India’s space economy are his topmost priorities.
As ISRO is undertaking in-depth research and new projects and programs to take space technology and space to a higher level and for the benefit to the common man, it is also for promoting new entrepreneurs and for more and more programs that would be useful to explore space and for bringing in benefits to mankind.
In an interview, Somanath said, “Gaganyaan will be a top priority and with the Covid pandemic on, it has been delayed a bit but the ambitious push to put a human crew in space is on and we, at the ISRO, hope that the mission would help lay the foundation for a sustainable human space flight program in the long run. Chandrayan-3 and Aditya-L1 missions are some of the projects awaiting immediate attention.”
While Covid has put our plans on the backburner or delayed our launches, we are hopeful of completing the landing trial or testing the landing gear mechanism of RLV soon. RLV is a priority and it will bring down the cost of launch drastically as also we need launch vehicles that need to be used even up to 15 times. The scaling down of costs would reflect on more launches and eventually the benefit is transferred to a large number of people.
The design and development of SSLV are almost done and we will be launching it within months.
When asked about his views on the emerging commercial opportunities in the space sector, He said, “There are a lot of emerging opportunities in the space sector and there is a huge enthusiasm among the country’s young entrepreneurs to explore the emerging commercial opportunities in the space sector. We have opened our doors to these game changers and they can explore the envelope of possibilities in this sunrise sector instead of confining their skills and imagination to a particular area of space science.”
[With Inputs from IANS]
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