New Delhi, June 13: A day after announcing the launch date of India's second moon mission Chandrayaan-2, the chief of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) K Sivan said the country is planning to launch its own space station. A space station is a spacecraft capable of supporting crewmembers, which is designed to remain in space for an extended period of time.

“We have to sustain the Gaganyaan programme after the launch of (the) human space mission. In this context, India is planning to have its own space station,” news agency PTI quoted Sivan as saying. The ISRO chief said the ambitious project will be an extension of the Gaganyaan mission. The first space station was Salyut 1, which was launched by the Soviet Union on April 19, 1971. Chandrayaan-2 Will Have 13 Payloads: ISRO.

China is planning to establish its first permanent space station, provisionally called the Chinese large modular space station, to receive crews by 2022. There is just one fully functioning space station in Earth orbit: the International Space Station (ISS). Launched in 1998, the ISS is the ninth space station to be inhabited by crews, following the Soviet and later Russian Salyut, Almaz, and Mir stations as well as Skylab from the US. Chandrayaan-2 First Look: ISRO Unveils Photos of Modules of India’s Second Moon Mission.

Five space agencies - NASA (United States), Roscosmos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe) and CSA (Canada) - are part of the ISS programme.

On Wednesday, ISRO announced that Chandrayaan-2 will be launched at 2:51 am on July 15. "ISRO has firmed up that Chandrayaan-2 Mission will be launched on July 15 early morning at 2 hours 51 minutes. The day we are going to land is either September 6 or September 7, that day happens to be the beginning of a lunar day. For one full lunar day, the lander and rover will be functioning and carry out scientific experiments," Dr Sivan said.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 13, 2019 04:29 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).