Move over ISS, India is planning own space station

There’s going to be another space station around the Earth, and it’s not the USA’s. Indian Space and Research Organization (ISRO) recently announced this ambitious project which will enable the agency to send more humans to space when executed. However, India will not join the International Space Station (ISS). ISRO will begin working on its space station after its first manned mission to space, called Gaganyaan (which means “space vehicle” in Sanskrit), in 2022. The government has sanctioned Rs 10,000 crores ($1.5 billion) for the Gaganyaan mission. The agency, which is all geared up for Chandrayaan 2 in July, will launch another mission to Sun — Aditya L1 —in the second half of 2020. The mission plans to study the Sun’s corona that impacts the change in climate on Earth. It will be placed at the first Lagrangian point (L1) between the Sun and Earth, where the dynamic gravitational attraction between these two bodies roughly cancels out. Not just that, India is also planning another interplanetary mission to Venus which will be launched in the next 2-3 years. ISRO’s space station will also be an extension of the Gaganyaan project. The weight of the space station is likely to be 20 tonnes. A space station is a spacecraft capable of supporting crew members, designed to remain in space for an extended period of time. Right now International Space Station is only one fully functional space station in the Earth’s lower orbit. Since 2000, astronauts have been staying there. The International Space Station is a partnership between European countries represented by European Space Agency, the United States (NASA), Japan (JAXA), Canada (CSA) and Russia (Roscosmos). Fun Fact Scientists estimate that there are as many stars in the universe as there are grains of sand on all the beaches on Earth.