Isro chief (File photo for representation purpose only)

BENGALURU: India’s ambitious Gaganyaan project — the country’s first human spaceflight programme — has received only 30% of the funds Isro had sought in this year’s budget, but the space agency maintains it can work its way around.

Isro had projected an amount of Rs 4,257 crore in its budget estimated for 2020-21, against which, only Rs 1,200 crore has been allocated.

The department-related Parliamentary Committee on Science & Technology, Environment, Forests and Climate Change, in its report tabled on Friday has noted: “The Gaganyaan programme is a very prestigious national endeavour with global significance. But the budgetary allocation for 2020-21 does not reflect this importance.”

It has further recommended that the allocation under the Gaganyaan programme be enhanced by another Rs 3000 crore at the revised estimate stage, as originally envisaged by the Department of Space .

The total cost of Gaganyaan — which envisages sending a crew of astronauts to space and bring them back safely to earth before the 75th Independence Day (2022) — as cleared by the union cabinet in December 2018, is Rs 10,000 crore.

Isro has already commenced on the hardware realization for ground test and first unmanned mission. Space flight training of four astronaut-elects has commenced in Russia, while the design, development and delivery of human centric products such as crew medical kit, crew health monitoring system, emergency survival kit, dosimeters, earmuffs and fire suppression system has started in collaboration with several national institutions.

Besides, a three-week training programme for flight surgeon was completed at Isro with participation of CNES, the French space agency. As TOI had reported last week, work on human rating is progressing as envisaged by Isro, and the agency has designed a new vehicle to test the crew escape system.

Besides, Isro has planned a series of tests before the first of the two unmanned flights scheduled for end of 2020. Also, Isro has shortlisted four biological and two physical science related microgravity experiments for the unmanned mission of Gaganyaan.

Further, the panel points out that while the department of space had projected a demand of Rs 24,686 crore for 2020-21, it has only been allocated Rs 13,479 crore, which is about 55% of what the department had asked for.

“It has been brought to the notice of the Committee that the department has accordingly re-prioritised its programmes. Secretary, Department of Space assured the Committee that the on-going programmes will not be affected and that it would seek additional funds at supplementary demand for grants stage,” the panel report reads.

