Chandrayaan-3 launch in 2021, four from IAF chosen for Gaganyaan: ISRO
Bengaluru, Jan 1: ISRO on Wednesday announced that the launch of country's third lunar mission, Chandrayaan-3 may happen next year and said four from the Indian Air Force have been selected for the ambitious Gaganyaan programme, whose astronaut training would commence soon in Russia.
The announcement comes a day after Union Minister Jitendra Singh said India will launch Chandrayaan-3 in 2020.
Addressing a press conference here, ISRO chairman K Sivan said work related to the third lunar mission was going on smoothly.
It will have a lander, rover and a propulsion module like its predecessor, he noted.
He also said the launch of Chandrayaan-3 may shift to next year.
Work on both Chandrayaan-3 and Gaganyaan, the country's maiden manned space mission, was going on simultaneously, he added.
Noting that Chandrayaan-2 orbiter's mission life was seven years, he said it would be used for the third lunar mission as well.
Giving an estimate of the project cost for Chandrayaan-3, Sivan said, "it would cost Rs 250 crore."
On the launch pad to come up in Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu, Sivan said, "apart from the space port at Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, the land acquisition for a second one has been initiated in Tuticorin district."
As regards the choice of location, he said, "It was mainly to get advantages of southward launch especially for SSLV (Small Satellite Launch Vehicle)."
Observing that the pad, once set up would be used for launching SSLVs initially, he said it may be expanded for big ones in future.
On future missions, he said, "25 missions have been planned for 2020."
"The missions that were planned in 2019 and could not be completed would be finished by March this year," he said.
When asked what went wrong with Vikram lander of Chandrayaan-2, he said it was due to velocity reduction failure.
"The velocity reduction failure was due to internal reasons," he said.
Chandrayaan-2 mission was India's first attempt to land on lunar surface. The ISRO had planned the landing on the South Pole of the lunar surface. However, the lander Vikram hard-landed.
Sivan also congratulated the Chennai based techie who recently located the Vikram lander that hard-landed and maintained that it was the space agency's policy not to release picture of the crashed module.
Elaborating on the country's maiden manned space mission, Gaganyaan, the ISRO chief said, four astronauts have been identified for the mission and their training will start from third week of this month in Russia.
He also mentioned that all the four astronauts chosen for the programme were men from the Indian Air Force.
"We had good progress in 2019 as regards Gaganyaan. And many of the designs were completed and astronauts' selection process is over. Now, four astronauts identified for training purpose.. that process is also completed," Sivan said.
India has signed agreements with Russia and France for cooperation on the Gaganyaan mission.
The ambitious Gaganyaan mission was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his Independence Day speech in 2018.
The space agency has sought an allocation of Rs 14,000 crore from the Centre in the budget for 2020-21.
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South African police arrest suspect in mass shooting that killed 12, including 3 children
Johannesburg (AP): A 32-year-old suspect has been arrested in connection with a mass shooting which claimed the lives of 12 people including three children at an unlicensed pub earlier this month, South African police said on Monday.
The man is suspected of being one of the three people who opened fire on patrons in a pub at Saulsville township, west of South Africa's capital Pretoria, killing 12 people including three children aged 3, 12 and 16.
At least 13 people were also injured during the attack, whose motive remains unknown.
According to the police, the suspect was arrested on Sunday while traveling to Botlokwa in Limpopo province, more than 340 km from where the mass shooting took place on Dec 6.
An unlicensed firearm believed to have been used during the attack was recovered from the suspect's vehicle.
“The 32-year-old suspect was intercepted by Limpopo Tracking Team on the R101 Road in Westenburg precinct. During the arrest, the team recovered an unlicensed firearm, a hand gun, believed to have been used in the commission of the multiple murders. The firearm will be taken to the Forensic Science Laboratory for ballistic analysis,” police said in statement.
The suspect was arrested on the same day that another mass shooting at a pub took place in the Bekkersdal township, west of Johannesburg, in which nine people were killed and 10 wounded when unknown gunmen opened fire on patrons.
Police have since launched a search for the suspects.
South Africa has one of the highest homicide rates in the world and recorded more than 26,000 homicides in 2024 — an average of more than 70 a day. Firearms are by far the leading cause of death in homicides.
The country of 62 million people has relatively strict gun ownership laws, but many killings are committed with illegal guns, according to authorities.
According to police, mass shootings at unlicensed bars are becoming a serious problem. Police shut down more than 11,000 illegal taverns between April and September this year and arrested more than 18,000 people for involvement in illegal liquor sales.
