NEW DELHI, India – India will aim to put astronauts on the moon by 2040 and build a space station by the middle of the next decade, the government said Tuesday.
The announcement follows a high-level meeting chaired by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to assess the progress of India’s Gaganyaan human spaceflight mission.
“The Prime Minister said that India should achieve new and ambitious goals, including setting up the Bharatiya Antariksha (Indian Space Station) by 2035 and sending the first Indian to the Moon by 2040,” said the government in a statement.
The statement comes as India works to develop independent human spaceflight capabilities and a first manned flight by 2025.
Meanwhile, NASA is orientation currently December 2025 to launch a crewed landing mission to the lunar south pole as part of its Artemis program. China has announced its goal of landing two astronauts on the Moon before 2030.
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is currently preparing for its unmanned flight test vehicle-1 (TV-D1) mission. The short-duration flight will launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Center on the morning of October 21 Indian Standard Time, or late October 20 Eastern.
The mission will test the crew’s escape system. This will fire to separate the crew module from a single stage test vehicle. The crew module will have a parachute-assisted descent into the sea about 10 kilometers off the coast of Sriharikota.
The statement of the moon also follows the Indian successes with the Chandrayaan-3 distance and launch of the Aditya L1 solar observatory The statement also outlines a number of future plans for India’s space exploration efforts beyond the Moon.
“The Space Department will develop a roadmap for lunar exploration. This will encompass a series of Chandrayaan missions, development of a Next Generation Launch Vehicle (NGLV), construction of a new platform launch, the creation of human-centered laboratories and associated technologies.
The prime minister also called for work on interplanetary missions, such as a Venus orbiter and a Mars lander.
India sent its first interplanetary mission, the Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), to the Red Planet in 2013. It entered Mars orbit in September 2014 and operated for nearly eight years. India this year too introduced reforms aimed at increasing private involvement in the space sector and attracting global capital.
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