Into the sky: ISRO vows to launch one spacecraft every month in 2018

Though their’ still over a month left for the new year to come, it looks like the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has already made a tight schedule for the coming year, and that’s why they have targeted to launch one spacecraft each month. Now, that’s some real new year resolution.

Setting the tight schedule, the chairman of ISRO, A S Kiran Kumar, told Indiatoday.in, “We are planning to have at least one launch mission a month in 2018 to deploy satellites in the earth’s orbit for various applications.”

Seeing the high expectations from ISRO, the government of India has also increased the budget to meet the expense of the operation.

“For 2018-19 and 2019-20 financial years, we are looking to receive increased budgets from the country in view of the missions,” he told media on the sidelines of the inauguration of a Gallery on Space Technology at the Visvesvaraya Industrial and Technological Museum in Bengaluru.

For the year 2017-2018, a budget of Rs 9,000 crore was allocated to ISRO.

The first mission of ISRO is likely to be the launch of Cartosat-2E remote sensing spacecraft along with 28 nano and micro-satellites in early January if delayed from December end.

The Chandrayaan-2 mission is likely to take place in the first quarter of 2018.

ISRO will also fly 600kg spacecraft designed by TeamIndus on its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) before March 31, 2018, for the city-based firm to win the Google Lunar XPRIZE.