First Indian to be sent to space by our own rocket in 2021: ISRO chief

India is moving ahead to meet its target of sending a man to space by December 2021, announced ISRO chairman K Sivan Saturday. Addressing the eighth convocation of IIT, Bhubaneswar, Sivan said, “By December 2021 the first Indian will be carried out, by our own rocket, to space. This is our target, everybody at ISRO is working on that.”

ISRO’s ambitious Gaganyaan project aims to send a three-member crew to space for at least seven days. The project was first announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his 2018 Independence Day speech.

While the project to send an Indian into space will be carried out by 2021, the Indian space agency aims to carry two unmanned flights before that.

“By December 2020, we will have our first unmanned mission of human spaceplane. The second unmanned human space plane, we target for July 2021,” the space chief was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.