• The Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, approved the building of the first unit of the ‘Bharatiya Antariksh Station’ (BAS) by extending the scope of Gaganyaan program. 

• The approval has been given for development of the first module of Bharatiya Antariksh Station (BAS-1) and undertake missions to demonstrate and validate various technologies for building and operating BAS.

• It will also revise the scope and funding of the Gaganyaan program.

• With a net additional funding of Rs 11,170 crore in the already approved program, the total funding for Gaganyaan program with the revised scope has been enhanced to Rs 20,193 crore.

• The revision includes the scope of development and precursor missions for BAS, and factoring one additional uncrewed mission and additional hardware requirement for the developments of ongoing Gaganyaan program.

• Now the human spaceflight program of technology development and demonstration is through eight missions to be completed by December 2028 by launching the first unit of BAS-1.

• The Gaganyaan program approved in December 2018 envisages undertaking the human spaceflight to Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and to lay the foundation of technologies needed for an Indian human space exploration programme in the long run. 

• The government’s vision for space includes creation of an operational Bharatiya Antariksh Station by 2035 and Indian Crewed Lunar Mission by 2040. 

• All leading space faring nations are making considerable efforts and investments to develop and operationalise capabilities that are required for long duration human space missions and further exploration to the Moon and beyond.

• The programme will be implemented through the established project management mechanism within ISRO. 

• The target is to develop and demonstrate critical technologies for long duration human space missions. 

• To achieve this goal, ISRO will undertake four missions under ongoing Gaganyaan program by 2026 and development of the first module of BAS and four missions for demonstration and validation of various technologies for BAS by December 2028.

• A national space-based facility such as the BAS will boost microgravity based scientific research and technology development activities. 

• This will lead to technological spin-offs and encourage innovations in key areas of research and development. 

• Enhanced industrial participation and economic activity in the human spaceflight programme will result in increased employment generation, especially in niche high technology areas in space and allied sectors.

International Space Station

• A partnership between European countries (represented by European Space Agency), the United States (NASA), Japan (JAXA, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), Canada (CSA, Canadian Space Agency) and Russia (Roscosmos), the International Space Station is the world’s largest international cooperative programme in science and technology.

• The International Space Station weighs almost 400 tonnes and covers an area as big as a football pitch.

• It would have been impossible to build the Space Station on Earth and then launch it into space in one go. There is no rocket big enough or powerful enough. To get round this problem the ISS was taken into space piece-by-piece and gradually built in orbit, approximately 400 km above the Earth’s surface. This assembly required more than 40 missions.

• The first piece of the ISS was launched in 1998. A Russian rocket launched that piece. After that, more pieces were added. Two years later, the station was ready for people. 

• The first crew arrived on November 2, 2000. People have lived on the space station ever since. 

• Over time, more pieces have been added. NASA and its partners around the world finished the space station in 2011.

• The ISS circles the Earth taking 90-93 minutes. The exact number of orbits per day is usually less than 16 (generally 15.5 to 15.9 orbits/day).

• The ISS is the ninth space station to be inhabited by crews, following the Soviet and later Russian Salyut, Almaz, and Mir stations as well as Skylab from the US.

• The unique microgravity laboratory has hosted more than 3,000 research investigations from over 4,200 researchers across the world.

The plan to crash ISS

• NASA is targeting to de-orbit the ISS and make it crash in the South Pacific Oceanic Uninhabited Area, the area around Point Nemo in 2031.

• Point Nemo, also known as the spacecraft cemetery, is the location in the ocean that is farthest from land. Many old satellites and other space debris have crashed there.

• The area is named after the famous submarine sailor from Jules Verne’s ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’.

• This remote oceanic location is about 2,688 kilometers from the nearest land — Ducie Island, part of the Pitcairn Islands, to the north; Motu Nui, one of the Easter Islands, to the northeast; and Maher Island, part of Antarctica, to the south.

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