PANAJI
After failing to get required knowledge support from other countries, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has decided to indigenously develop their own environmental control and life support system (ECLSS) for the upcoming human space flight mission Gaganyaan, which is expected to be launched in 2025.
Addressing the 5th edition of Manohar Parrikar Vidnyan Mahotsav 2023 at Dona Paula, ISRO Chairman S Somanath said that the organisation has decided to indigenously develop the ECLSS.
“We have no experience in developing an environmental control life support system. We were only designing rockets and satellites. We thought that this knowledge would come from other nations, but unfortunately, after so much discussion, nobody is willing to give it to us,” he said adding “We are going to develop it in India using the knowledge we have and the industries that we have”.
The ISRO chairman explained that India has been into knowledge-building design capability development over the last so many years, and the pinnacle of this is going to be the Indian human space flight programme. “When we send humans to space through our Gaganyaan programme, I think the amount of skill and confidence that we need to have has to be higher than what we currently have,” he said.
Somanath said that there is always a risk of failure. “When you have a failure possibility, then you must have protection against it in human space flight. This is a core of human space flight-which we should not put the risk of having the astronaut lost due to the failure in the rocket. So it calls for intelligence in the rocket. This is what we are working on today,” he said.
The Chairman said that the first part of the Gaganyaan programme is the rocket and the rockets are always bound to fail. “Thousands of elements should work without any flaw to make a launch happen,” he said.
Somanath said that ISRO is developing many new technologies to handle human space flight.
