NEW DELHI/BENGALURU: Prime Minister

on Wednesday, as part of his

speech,

.

"When India celebrates 75th year of Independence in 2022, and if possible even before, an Indian son or daughter will undertake a manned space mission on board 'Gaganyaan' carrying the national flag," the PM announced from the ramparts of the Red Fort. This would make India the fourth nation to send a human in space after the United States, Russia and China.

However, the proposed

programme (HSP), something that has been on the table since 2004, is still a long way away despite advancements in some critical technologies in the past decade.

The original plan was realising a Two-Stage-to-Orbit (TSTO) fully reusable launch vehicle, which could carry two-three people into low earth orbit and bring them back. The UPA government had sanctioned Rs 145 crore for pre-launch activities and Isro is expected to get more funding in the coming months following Modi's announcement today.

As of today, there is no actual estimation in public domain, but insiders say that it needs a budget of at least Rs 10,000 crore to Rs 12,000 crore.

As part of the preparations, Isro has been testing some technologies, an important one involving the crew escape system- a key system being developed as part of the proposed HSP- was tested on July 5.

The space agency tested the Crew Escape System (CES) for its crew capsule in an emergency pad abort test (PAT) in Sriharikota. The test, which lasted 4.31 minutes, involved aborting the space capsule at launch.

The Crew Escape System is an emergency escape measure designed to quickly pull the crew module along with the astronauts to a safe distance from the launch vehicle in the event of a launch abort. The first test (Pad Abort Test) demonstrated the safe recovery of the crew module in case of any exigency at the launch pad.

This was a second major test after it successfully launched a crew module with dummy payloads and brought it back on to the Arabian Sea. Isro has already completed successful tests of the scaled down version of the Re-usable Launch Vehicle Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD), and is preparing for two major experiments in 2019 - one will involve using a helicopter, while the second and major one would be the orbital re-entry test.

The space agency has completed the wind tunnel model with landing gear and low subsonic tests at the Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur (IIT-K). For the orbital re-entry test, Isro has proposed to design and develop a scaled-up version of RLV.

"You must understand that this won't be the actual RLV, but a model," Isro chairman K Sivan said at a press conference he had convened on August 12.

Speaking separately with TOI, Sivan said that they are yet to finalise the landing site for the experiment. "There are options in Challakere, one place in Rajasthan and another forward post, there is no final decision yet. The important thing would be to select a place that will have no habitation around the landing site. This is an experimental test and we need to take all precautions," he said.

All these technologies are crucial for the manned mission, and these are just some of the early stage experiments. Sivan has said that Isro was in the process of preparing a revised report on the preparations of the project.

The said report is to be purely an internal document, with no other potential stakeholder involved. "We are making a few changes...it is purely an internal document and there's no other agency involved at this moment," Sivan had said on July 7, at the sidelights of the LM Katre Memorial Lecture.

Answering a specific question on HSP, Sivan had said: "It is our imagination, our dream that it should happen. But right now we are only in the preparations stage where we are demonstrating critical technologies, there's a lot to do."

Stating that Isro always anticipates and develop technologies for the future even before a project is on the cards, he said that the HSP is one such programme.

Conceding that there is still a long way to go, Sivan had said Isro was yet to even decide which rocket-GSLV MK-II or GSLV MK-III-it will use if the HSP gets the green signal from the government.

"We are working on several combinations," he had said. But experts and some Isro insiders TOI has been speaking with suggest that neither of the two rockets are man-rated yet. Insiders say that if India does launch people into space, it can only do it with the GSLV MK-III, and that too an advanced version of it, which the agency must now build and master with virtually no errors.