WHENEVER WE hear about any Indian astronaut involved in space missions, we get to hear they were aboard a Soviet or the US mission. But soon we are going to hear, what we always wanted to – India will soon have its indigenous space manned missions, without partnering with any foreign country or company.

Indian Air force (IAF), according to Zee News, has signed an MoU with the Indian Space research Organisation (ISRO) to join the project for country’s first indigenous manned space mission. Though this seems to be baby step, given the challenges ahead, but still the decision has earned the government accolades from various quarters.

"IAF has entered into an MoU with the ISRO for long term space research. ISRO has supplied it with lot of equipments and the provisional time for first selection is 2020 and the original thing is likely to take place much later,” Director General of Army Medical Corps (AMC) Lieutenant General H L Kakria was quoted by Zee News.

While it is seen in good books across the country but taking a cue from neighbouring China, our government needs to invest and spend more funds so that we also take our space programme ahead. They (Chinese) are aggressively mounting on their space programme. They have recently unveiled their space programme to be completed by 2016.

Only recently they have developed a functional satellite-based navigation system, and are working on an orbiting space station, to send probes into deep space to explore the planets, asteroids, and the sun, and eventually manned expeditions to the Moon and Mars. By 2016, China will improve its launch vehicles, launch advanced communications and meteorological satellites, launch deep space probes and laboratories, and launch more Compass satellites until it rivals GPS and GLONASS in terms of accuracy and coverage, according to ExtremeTech, a technology website.

Though the initiative was taken earlier when India decided to carry out its indigenous missions from a full-fledged training facility in Bangalore, the ball seem to have started to roll. We don’t need to depend on the partnerships of Russia and the US. We have the top-notch astronauts, what we need is investment in the sector.