NEW DELHI, March 15 (Xinhua) -- A budget of 90.23 billion Indian rupees (around 1.1 billion U.S. dollars) was allocated to the Indian government's ambitious space flight mission, Minister for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh said on Wednesday.
The Gaganyaan Mission envisages launching a crew of three members to an orbit of 400 km and bringing them back after three days.
In reply to a question raised in the parliament, the minister said the scope of the mission was to demonstrate human spaceflight capability to Low Earth Orbit and safe return.
"The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is developing indigenous technologies that are crucial to meet the objectives of the Gaganyaan Mission and to take up any further interplanetary missions," the minister added.
According to the minister, the government had created the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Center (IN-SPACe) as the single window agency to promote, enable, authorize and supervise the non-government entities in the space sector in India.
He further stated that the government had taken a number of steps to strengthen the space sector, like opening up it for enhanced participation of private enterprises by allowing them to conduct end-to-end activities across all verticals of space domain.
The role of New Space India Limited (NSIL) has also been widened to bring forth a commerce-oriented approach towards the conduct of space activities. Besides, private industries are also contributing significantly to the Indian space program led by ISRO, delivering subsystems and components. ■
