Pandemic caused a lull in ISRO in 2021, says Sivan

Bengaluru: Acknowledging that very little has happened in ISRO in 2021, Chairman K. Sivan says that there has been a lull within the organisation over the last few months, due to the impact of the coronavirus. “The impact of the lockdowns was still being felt and activities could only be carried out in keeping with the COVID-19 guidelines and government protocols,” he said. “The feeling that very little happened in ISRO in 2021 is primarily due to the small number of launches,” Sivan said, in a New Year message posted on the ISRO website.

However, as the Chairman of ISRO, he wrote, “I am extremely proud that all of you have made very significant contributions in continuing the operational missions, conceiving many new missions, undertaking many technology development initiatives, and planning for the next decade of space activities,” he told the employees of the space agency.

Last year, ISRO had only two successful PSLV missions, including the one dedicated commercial mission by its commercial arm New Space India Limited (NSIL).

GSLV F10 mission failed due to cryogenic stage anomaly. A national-level failure analysis committee was constituted and it has identified the root cause and given its recommendations, according to Sivan.

Necessary design changes are being incorporated to improve the robustness of the systems concerned, he added. In the space application domain, ISRO completed a geospatial energy map of India, desertification and land degradation atlas of India, dissemination of hydro-informatics products under the national hydrology project and provided support towards disaster management activities.

In the navigation area, more than 30 NavIC-enabled mobile handsets have been released in the Indian market. Also, all the major mobile chipset manufacturers have released NavIC-enabled chipsets, he said.

He said three new space science missions are in the pipeline - ‘DISHA’, a twin aeronomy satellite mission, Venus mission and ISRO-CNES joint science mission ‘TRISHNA’. The mission is meant for accurate mapping of land surface temperatures. This mission would be the benchmark for providing temperature data at best resolution and repeatability even globally, Sivan said.

India’s flagship GAGANYAAN project has completed the design phase and has entered into the testing phase. “There is a directive to launch the first unmanned mission before the 75th anniversary of India’s independence (August 15, 2022) and all the stake-holders are putting their best effort to meet the schedule. I am sure that we will be able to meet this target,” Sivan said. On space sector reforms, Sivan, also Secretary in the Department of Space, noted that the government has already approved them for expanding the footprint of the space industry within India and globally.

“Towards this, many policies have been revised after due process to accommodate the reforms,” he added. Sivan said ISRO has formulated the decadal plan for the Indian space programme for the country as a whole. “The decadal plan is formulated by keeping the ethos of space sector reforms to enable the national space sector which includes ISRO, academia and private sector. This is to foster all-round growth in operational missions, launch services, science missions, technology demonstration missions and new technology development initiatives,” he said.