Why Gaganyaan mission is 'extremely important' for India, ISRO chief explains

"Gaganyaan is extremely important for India as it'll boost the science and technology capability of the country," K Sivan said.

New Delhi: Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief K Sivan on Saturday explained the importance of Gaganyaan mission, which is the space agency's first priority now. 

"Gaganyaan is extremely important for India as it'll boost the science and technology capability of the country," Sivan said, reports news agency ANI.  

"By December 2020, we are re going to have the first unmanned mission of human space plane. The second unmanned human space plane, we are targeting for July 2021. By December 2021, the first Indian will be carried out, by our own rocket, to space. This is our target, everybody at ISRO is working on that," he added.

ISRO Chief K Sivan: The 2nd unmanned human space plane, we are targeting for July 2021. By December 2021 the first Indian will be carried out, by our own rocket, to space. This is our target, everybody at ISRO is working on that. https://t.co/CftiwoNaH1 — ANI (@ANI) September 21, 2019

The ISRO chief had earlier said that Gaganyaan mission is the space agency's next priority while briefing about their moon mission Chandrayaan-2.

Chandrayaan'-2's Vikram Lander lost contact with ISRO while it was about to land on the moon's surface in the early hours of September 7. Though the location of the lander was found later, the communication could not be established. 

"We are trying to set the target of achieving this mission by the next year. For this, we are working on different options. But first of all, we have to understand what really happened to the lander. This is our first priority now," Sivan had said. 

Chandrayaan-2 was India's first mission to the moon's south polar region, where no country has ever gone before. Sivan said that the mission was 98 per cent successful. 

"We could not have established any communication with the lander yet. Chandrayaan-2 had two important objectives - science and technology demonstration. We achieved total success in science objective while in the technology demonstration, the success percentage was almost full. That's why the project can be termed as 98 per cent successful," he added.

(With ANI inputs)