Indian Space Research Organisation Chief Sreedhara Panicker Somanath said on Thursday that the first round of tests for the Indian Bharatiya Antariksh space station will be held in 2025.
"A basic model of the space station is expected to be put in orbit by 2028; by 2035, we will have the full, expanded version of it," Somanath told the Hindustan Times at India International Science Festival. "I have been reviewing some of the designs... By next year we are hoping to conduct the first round of tests for the space station."
Outlining the objective of India's first space station with students, Somanath said the Bharatiya Antariksh Station will be "the hub for conducting microgravity studies, international collaborative research and further studies around space biology and medicine."
Last year, India announced that it would complete its first space station by 2035 and send an Indian to the moon by 2040.
A space station is able to accommodate humans in space for a longer time and also provides a facility so that other spacecraft are able to dock before traveling further into space.
An independent space station could also act as an "eye in the sky" that could monitor friends and foes round the clock. However, such installations are also extremely costly.
The ISS , built by Russia's ROSCOSMOS, NASA, the European Space Agency, Japan's JAXA, and the Canadian Space Agency, cost $100 billion. Annual maintenance of the ISS comes to around $3-4 billion.
Apart from India, Russia and the US are also each planning to launch a sovereign space station.