India far away from launching human spaceflight mission: Ex-ISRO chief
(Sourced from PTI)
India has a long way to go before it can actually undertake a human spaceflight mission, former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman AS Kiran Kumar said. Officials of the Bengaluru-headquartered space agency said development of different technologies needed for making the ambitious venture a reality, including environmental control and life support systems and flight suit, was under progress.
The ISRO said it has carried out a major technology demonstration, the first in a series of tests to qualify a crew escape system, a critical technology relevant for human spaceflight. The crew escape system is an emergency measure designed to quickly pull the crew module along with astronauts to a safe distance from the launch vehicle in the event of a launch abort.
ISRO officials said the government is yet to give its formal approval for the human spaceflight mission which was on the drawing board of the space agency for quite a long time now. Kiran Kumar said earlier this year that a human spaceflight was "not very high on priority" and indicated that "resource constraints" were holding back the high-cost venture.
