Ready to build space station if govt says so: ISRO chief AS Kiran Kumar

INDORE: The spacesuit is ready. A survival capsule is on the way. ISRO has everything to send astronauts into space and develop a space station, all that’s left is for the government to give the money and policy clearance, said ISRO chief AS Kiran Kumar here on Monday.
“We have the capability to create a space station, but you (government) have to give us the money and time to make this happen,” Kumar told reporters on the sidelines of 34th foundation day celebration of the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT).
“If the government and country decides… we are ready. You need to provide us funding, policy clearance,” he said, adding that space mission is low priority for the government “because one doesn’t see any immediate use of this in country’s development and growth”.
Kumar’s comments came in the backdrop of Chinese media reacting to ISRO’s recent record launch of 104 satellites at one go. An editorial in a Chinese newspaper pointed out that “there is no Indian astronaut in space and the country’s plan to establish a space station has not started”.
Kumar said ISRO has made great progress in space technology. “Today, we have successfully conducted satellite recovery experiment, which means we can recover an object coming back to earth. We have built the tiles needed to withstand extreme temperature (during re-entry). Then the spacesuit thing, we have done it. We are building an environmental capsule so that people survive in that atmosphere,” the ISRO chief said, adding that that they are also working on RLV-TD (reusable space launch vehicle or space shuttle) and air breathing propulsion.
“We are also going to do a pad abort test — how to get back our astronauts safely in case there’s an emergency during launch. We keep building our capability. The day our country decides to do it (built a space station), we will say we are ready,” he asserted.
Kumar said that the country’s space programmes have given back more than what was spent. The capabilities provided through space programmes in terms of communication, navigation and earth monitoring have helped improve governance, he said.
ISRO is poised to launch GSLV Mark III-D1 by April this year and the second one within a year. It will carry a satellite that will employ advanced spacecraft technology, including experiments in electrical propulsion, indigenous Li-ion battery and indigenous bus bars for power distribution. The agency was working on capabilities to reduce cost of access to space. For future launches, the country will need a launch vehicle capability that costs 115th or 120th of what it is now, he said.
“Today, we have about 40 satellites but they are not enough to meet the requirement of communication, earth observation or even weather. We need to increase the number of systems operating in space,” he said. “We have 6-8 launches per year on PSLV, we need to go to 12 to 18. For that we have to reduce cost.”
ISRO is working on semi-cryogenic technology using liquid oxygen and aviation grade kerosene to fuel future launches at lower cost.
On the 104-launch, the ISRO chairman said the agency was not trying to make records. The primary objective was to launch Cartostat. “We made use of the space left and recovered half the cost incurred on Cartostat,” he said.