2024 to be a year of Gaganyaan readiness: ISRO chief Somnath

SRIHARIKOTA: ISRO has lined up a series of tests for Gaganyaan, its ambitious manned mission, this year and 2024 will be a year of “Gaganyaan readiness,” said the agency’s Chairman S Somanath on Monday.

Briefing reporters on ISRO’s agenda for 2024, he said: “We are going to get ready for at least 12-14 missions this year. 2024 is going to be a year for Gaganyaan readiness, though it is targeted for 2025.

“The Gaganyaan mission began with the TV-D1 or the abort mission (successfully conducted in October 2023). We have four such missions in the series. Our target is to do at least two more in 2024. By then, we will have three abort mission demonstrations,” Somanath said.

Somanath said that the unmanned missions would help the agency understand its preparedness of various hardware, adding that ISRO would also conduct helicopter-based drop tests to prove the parachute systems for the unmanned mission.

On the other missions lined up for ISRO in 2024, he said, “We are going to have launches of GSLV for NISAR this year itself. We are going to have the first flight of GSLV with INSAT-3DS soon. The (launch) vehicle is almost ready.

“The second flight of GSLV will carry the NASA-ISRO synthetic aperture radar satellite. This means that a minimum of two GSLV satellites are required to be launched. There are a few more in the pipeline, including the NAVIC series.” he said.