Government of India approves Rs.10,000 crore for ‘Gangayaan’ project

Guwahati, December 28, 2018:

The Union Cabinet has cleared the budget for India’s first human spaceflight called ‘Gangayaan’. A total sum of Rs.10,000 crores has been approved for the project. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had set the agenda for the project from the ramparts of the Red Fort on Independence Day and stated that a manned spacecraft should take India’s national flag into space by the year 2022.

ISRO has been working on the project since 2004 and intends to send a 3 member crew manned spacecraft into space for a minimum of 7 days. The main objective of the mission is to create a spaceship (called ‘Gangayaan’), that will carry three humans to the low Earth orbit and then return to the planet after seven days. If India is successful in this mission, it would become the fourth nation to send a manned craft into space after the US, Russia and China.