Gearing up for its maiden manned space mission, ISRO unveiled its Human Space Flight Centre in Bengaluru on January 30. The space agency is gearing up for the human spaceflight programme by the end of 2021, which is likely to include a female astronaut.

The Gaganyaan mission has the “highest priority” for ISRO in 2019, according to the space agency, and the plan is to have the first unmanned mission in December 2020 and the second by July 2021. Once these are completed, the manned mission will happen in December 2021.

Former ISRO chairman K. Kasturirangan inaugurated the Human Space Flight Centre (HSFC) at the ISRO headquarters campus in Bengaluru, the space agency said. ISRO chairman K. Sivan, directors of other ISRO centres, former chairmen and other dignitaries were also present, it said, adding that a full-scale model of Gaganyaan’s crew module was also unveiled during the event.

The HSFC shall be responsible for implementing the Gaganyaan project, which involves end-to-end mission planning, development of engineering systems for crew survival in space, crew selection and training, and also pursue activities for sustained human spaceflight missions, ISRO said.

It will take the support of existing ISRO centres to implement the first development flight of Gaganyaan under the human spaceflight programme.

S. Unnikrishnan Nair is the founder director of HSFC, while R. Hutton is the project director of Gaganyaan. The Union Cabinet gave its nod for the Rs 9,023 crore programme recently.

In his Independence Day address last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced that the mission would be undertaken by 2022 using ISRO’s own capabilities. “We have resolved that by 2022, when India celebrates 75 years of independence or maybe even before that, certainly some of our young boys and girls will unfurl the tricolour in space,” he had said in his speech at the Red Fort.

Sivan had earlier said that the objective of the mission is to carry a three-member crew to the low Earth orbit and return them safely to a predefined destination on Earth.