ISRO, Russian Space Agency join hands for Indian Man Mission

Bangalore, Dec 13 (ANI): The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the Russian Space Agency have joined hands to share critical equipments for the Indian Man Mission to the Moon.

India and Russia signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to promote joint activities in the field of human space flight programme during the visit of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev last week.

"Under the MoU, both countries will jointly build spacecraft for the Indian manned mission," said S Satish, spokesperson of ISRO.As per the MoU, an Indian astronaut will embark on a mission to space in a Russian spacecraft within the next five years, ahead of ISRO's maiden human space flight scheduled for 2014 or 2015.

"We have well laid our plans and of course manned mission are in our plan and programme. May be manned mission for the government approval, comes immediately, around 2014 or 2015, will be the targeted launch date," added Satish.

Recently, ISRO achieved benchmark success when the Chandrayaan-1 (India's moon mission) was successfully launched on October 22, by PSLV-C11.

This success allowed India to join the elite lunar club of which Russia, the USA, Japan, China and European Space Agency are already members.

India is also planning to launch the satellite 'Aditya' to study the sun by 2012 and it also hopes to send an astronaut into space by 2012. (ANI)