32 missions, including Chandrayaan-2, planned for 2019: ISRO
Bengaluru, Jan 3: India has planned 32 missions, including the "most complex" Chandrayaan-2 during 2019, the Indian Space Research Organisation has said.
India's maiden human spaceflight programme 'Gaganyaan' activities would go full steam to accomplish the various development and qualification milestones during the year, the space agency said.
"The year 2019 promises to be much more challenging to the ISRO community with 32 planned missions (14 launch vehicles, 17 satellites and 1 Tech demo missions)," ISRO Chairman K Sivan said in a New Year message.
"This includes the most complex Chandrayaan-2, which will be the 25th mission from SLP (second launch pad), and the development flights of Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV)," he said.
ISRO had earlier said Chandrayaan-2 will be launched in a window from January-February 16, 2019.
Sources said it is expected by the middle of next month but no date has been finalised.
"We are all trying hard. Definitely, it should be possible to launch the mission in February," a senior ISRO official told PTI.
"There is no impediment. It's on track," the official said.
Chandrayaan-2 mission, costing nearly Rs 800 crore, is an advanced version of the previous Chandrayaan-1 mission about 10 years ago.
This spacecraft to be launched on board GSLV-Mk III is a totally indigenous mission, comprising an Orbiter, Lander and Rover.
Sivan said during the year, Gaganyaan activities would go "full steam" to accomplish the various development and qualification milestones.
The Union Cabinet gave its nod for the Rs 9,023-crore programme last Friday.
The objective of the mission is to carry a three-member crew to low earth orbit and return them safely to a predefined destination on earth.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on Independence Day announced that the mission would be undertaken by 2022.
ISRO is aiming to reinstate its microwave remote-sensing capability through the RISAT (Radar Imaging Satellite) series and attain operational Geo-imaging capability through the GISAT (GEO Imaging Satellite) series, according to Sivan.
It is also planned to progressively improve the payload capability of GSLV (Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle) and its variants.
The country would meet the high throughput bandwidth requirement of Digital India and also in-flight connectivity with the launch of GSAT-20.
On the application side, crop production estimation would be enhanced to cover 10 additional crops and also provide vital inputs for water and energy security, Sivan said.
He said 2019 is the birth centenary of the founding father of Indian Space Programme, Vikram A Sarabhai, and year-long celebrations, consisting of a host of national and international events, would commence August 12, 2019.
Terming 2018 as a year of many 'firsts' and 'beginnings' with profound growth in all directions, he said during the year ISRO completed 16 missions, signing off with seven successful missions within 35 days.
This included two successful GSLV missions in a single year.
Among other things, the period also witnessed active discussions and partnerships with other space agencies in advanced technology areas of human spaceflight and other areas like LOX/Methane propulsion, joint satellite missions, among others, he said.
A major initiative has been the UNNATI programme, which is an international programme to train participants on nano satellite assembly, and has evoked major respo ISRO-LD CHANDRAYAAN from 34 countries.
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Haryana land deal: Robert Vadra appears before ED on 3rd day
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New Delhi (PTI): Robert Vadra, the businessman brother-in-law of Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, appeared before the ED on the third straight day on Thursday for questioning in a money laundering case linked to alleged irregularities in a 2008 Haryana land deal case.
The 56-year-old has been questioned for over ten hours in the last two days as part of the investigation and the recording of his statement process under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) will continue Thursday, officials said.
He reached the ED office in central Delhi shortly after 11 am accompanied by his wife Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, who is MP from Wayanad.
Vadra had called the ED action borne out of "political vendetta" against him and his family, and said that while he has always cooperated with the agency and furnished thousands of pages of documents, he needed a "closure" in these cases which are almost 20 years old.
The probe against Vadra is linked to a land deal in Haryana's Manesar-Shikohpur (now sector 83) in Gurugram.
The deal of February 2008 was done by a company named Skylight Hospitality Pvt Ltd, where Vadra was a director earlier, as it purchased a 3.5 acre of land in Shikohpur from Onkareshwar Properties at a price of Rs 7.5 crore.
A Congress government led by Bhupinder Singh Hooda was in power at that time. Four years later, in September 2012, the company sold the land to realty major DLF for Rs 58 crore.
The land deal got embroiled in controversy in October 2012 after IAS officer Ashok Khemka, then posted as the director general of Land Consolidation and Land Records-cum-Inspector-General of Registration of Haryana, cancelled the mutation of this categorising the transaction as violative of state consolidation Act and some related procedures.
The BJP, which was in opposition then, had termed the case an instance of "corruption" in land deals and that of "nepotism", hinting at Vadra's kinship with the first family of the Congress party.
Haryana Police had filed an FIR to probe this deal in 2018.
Vadra has been questioned multiple times by the federal probe agency in two different money laundering cases earlier.
Sources told PTI that the ED will soon file chargesheets in all these three cases being investigated against Vadra.
