India Space Program: First Crewed Mission To Fly 'Vyomnauts' To Low-Earth Orbit

On Aug. 15, India celebrated its 72nd year of Independence and with that the country’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced one of the most ambitious projects in the history of Indian space missions.

During his annual Independence Day address to the nation at the Red Fort in Delhi, Modi stated the nation will send an astronaut into space as part of a manned mission within the next four years.

"Today, from the ramparts of the Red Fort, I want to give the country a good news," Modi said in his speech, NDTV reported. "India has always advanced in space science but we have decided that by 2022 when India completes 75 years of Independence, or before that, a son or daughter of India will go to space with a tricolor in their hands".

The project, which was first proposed nearly a decade ago, comes with a tight deadline, but the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) hopes to achieve it on time.

“[The] PM has given the target of 2022 and it’s our duty to meet it,” Kailasavadivoo Sivan, the chairman of ISRO, told the Guardian. “We have completed many technologies like crew module and escape systems. The project has been under way; now we need to prioritize and achieve the target.”

As part of the manned mission, the space agency will use the indigenous Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III or GSLV Mk III — its most-powerful rocket till date.

Once the launch vehicle, its spacecraft or crew module and related technologies are prepped for the launch, the agency will start conducting unmanned experimental flights from a launch site at Sriharikota, in the state of Andhra Pradesh. The demonstration phase — with two uncrewed flights — is slated to begin sometime around 2020 and will eventually lead up to the flight of a crew of three into low earth orbit for five to seven days.

The pilot and crew flying on the mission will be called "vyomnauts," a moniker that comes from the Sanskrit word "Vyom" or space in English. The mission, if successful, will make India the fourth country in the world after the U.S., Russia, and China to have capabilities to launch a man into space.

That said, it is worth noting that ISRO has already conducted some tests required to accomplish the ambitious mission. Back in 2014, it launched and recovered a prototype of the crew module set to be used in the manned mission and just a few months ago, a pad abort test was conducted to see if their technologies could rescue the crew if any accident occurs at the launchpad. The cost of the entire effort, as per current estimates, would be around $1.3 billion.

The Indian space program has made some significant achievements since its commission all the way back in 1962. The country launched a lunar mission named Chandrayaan-1 in 2008 and followed that up with the Mars Orbiter Mission — where a space probe was launched to the Red Planet — in 2014. The country also plans to launch second iterations of these missions in coming years.