Union Minister of State for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh on Thursday held a review meeting with senior officers of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in Bengaluru on Thursday.
Outgoing chairman of ISRO S. Somnath and incoming chairman V. Narayanan, Mission Directors, were present at the meeting. Dr. Singh was apprised of ISRO’s major upcoming space missions by the senior officers. ISRO has major space missions scheduled in the first half of 2025, including two GSLV missions, one commercial mission of LVM3 for a global customer apart from the first uncrewed orbital mission of Gaganyaan.
The Department of Space said that the first mission of the year, GSLV-F15/ NVS-02 will launch the second navigation satellite, NVS-02 in the NVS series. The integration of the launch vehicle is in the advanced stage at the launch complex in Sriharikota and it is scheduled during the last week of January.
“The launch of ISRO-NASA joint mission, NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture RADAR) is planned for the GSLV-F16 mission. The GSLV vehicle systems are getting ready for the final integration at Sriharikota and the NISAR satellite is undergoing the final phase of testing,” the department said.
It added that the LVM3-M5 launch is for a dedicated commercial mission to launch BlueBird Block-2 satellites under a commercial agreement between NewSpace India Ld. and M/s AST SpaceMobile Inc., U.S. “LVM3 vehicle systems are available at Sriharikota and the vehicle integration has commenced for a proposed launch in March,” it said.
This year will also witness the first uncrewed orbital mission under the Gaganyaan programme wherein a human-rated LVM3 vehicle will launch the Orbital Module to a low-earth orbit to validate the end-to-end human spaceflight mission. For this mission, the launch vehicle integration has been commenced at Sriharikota and the Orbital Module is undergoing the final phase of preparations.
Published – January 09, 2025 09:26 pm IST
