The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will put an astronaut on the Moon by 2040 and also aims to have its own space station by the year 2035, the director of Chandrayaan-3, India's lunar mission, told the media on Saturday.
"The Prime Minister (Narendra Modi) and the ISRO chairman have already said that by 2040 we wanted to have an Indian astronaut on the moon and also to have our space station by 2035. These are very ambitious works that ISRO has taken up and we are working towards that," Chandrayaan-3 Director P Veeramuthuvel said during an event in the southern Tamil Nadu state.
Last October, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that ISRO would not only strive to put the first Indian on Moon by 2040, but also set-up a "Bharatiya Antariksha Station" (Indian Space Station) by the year 2035.
The announcement was made after Modi chaired a meeting of ISRO scientists to review progress on the Gaganyaan Mission, which would be India's first manned mission to space in 2025.
India's Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh told the Parliament this week that ISRO was also conducting "feasibility studies for future robotic exploration missions to be sent to the Moon in the form of rovers, orbiters, or landers".
He also said that plans to develop a domestic space station were also being carried out in a "phased manner".