New Delhi: Steve Lee Smith, former NASA astronaut, has showered praise on India's impressive accomplishments in the space sector, highlighting the country's recent historic feats. Smith remarked, “India has achieved remarkable success in space over the past 20 years and is highly respected globally. Their mission to Mars was a pioneering effort as they became the first country to successfully orbit Mars. Additionally, India’s lunar landing last year was a groundbreaking achievement in world history.”
Smith also expressed optimism about India's upcoming space endeavors, noting, “India is now preparing its own spacecraft for human missions, and they have even named their astronauts. It’s exciting to think that Indian astronauts will soon be traveling to space aboard an Indian spacecraft.”
In conjunction with India’s space ambitions, NASA will assist in training two Indian astronauts, one of whom is expected to travel to the International Space Station (ISS) later this year. According to ISRO Chairman S. Somanath, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) plans to select four astronauts for this training.
India's future space station, the Bharatiya Antariksha Station, is set to be constructed by ISRO and is expected to be operational by 2035. It will be smaller than the ISS, with a mass of approximately 20 tonnes compared to the ISS's 450 tonnes and the Chinese Tiangong Space Station's 100 tonnes. The Indian station will orbit Earth at around 400 km altitude and focus on microgravity experiments.
In another significant milestone, India’s first solar mission, the Aditya-L1 spacecraft, recently completed its first halo orbit around the Sun-Earth L1 point. Launched on September 2 of the previous year, the Aditya-L1 spacecraft was inserted into its target halo orbit on January 6. The spacecraft takes approximately 178 days to complete one revolution around the L1 point, marking a major achievement for Indian space research.
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