By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Giving wings to India’s ambitious plan to dominate space, the country will have its own space station by 2030. Announcing this and a clutch of other lofty projects here on Thursday, ISRO chairman K Sivan said that the proposed space station will be part of Isro’s long-drawn launch schedule that includes a mission to Venus, to be launched in the next two-three years.

Also on the cards are a manned mission to the Moon as well as setting up colonies on the Moon and Mars.“We are planning to have a separate space station. We will not be a part of the International Space Station. Our space station is going to be very small. We will be launching a small module and that will be used for carrying out microgravity experiments,” Sivan told reporters here on Thursday.

The proposed space station will weigh around 20 tonnes and be located in a low earth orbit of 400 km to conduct micro-gravity experiments. It is expected to accommodate astronauts for a short duration of 15-20 days in space.

A space station is a spacecraft capable of supporting crew members, designed to remain in space for an extended period of time and for other spacecraft to dock.After the Moon mission, ISRO will launch a mission to the Sun, Aditya-L1, in the first half of 2020, said Sivan, who is also the Secretary, Department of Space.

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India’s human space flight programme is scheduled for December 2021. “In order to sustain the human space flight, we need to have a space station,” he added.He said the finer details of the space station would emerge after the launch of the Gaganyaan, India’s first manned mission to space.China also plans to build a space station of its own.