First Manned Space Flight

ISRO is working on India's first human space flight mission, which was earlier scheduled for 2020, but was delayed due to the Covid pandemic. "Gaganyaan project envisages demonstration of human spaceflight capability by launching a crew of 3 members to an orbit of 400 km for a 3 days mission and bringing them back safely to earth, by landing in Indian sea waters," ISRO has said.

The manned flight will be preceded by two unmanned flights. "We are getting ready for the (first of the two) unmanned crew module mission by the beginning of next year," an ISRO official said. ISRO is also working on the country's first dedicated polarimetry mission to study the dynamics of bright astronomical X-ray sources in extreme conditions.

The project is likely to launch later this year or early 2024. "The emission mechanism from various astronomical sources such as black holes, neutron stars, active galactic nuclei, pulsar wind nebulae etc. originates from complex physical processes and are challenging to understand. The polarimetry measurements add two more dimensions to our understanding, the degree of polarisation and the angle of polarisation and thus is an excellent diagnostic tool to understand the emission processes from astronomical sources," ISRO added.