Gaganyaan in 2026, Chandrayaan-4 likely in 2028, reveals ISRO chief

ISRO chairman S Somanath revealed new dates for upcoming space missions on Saturday, while delivering the Sardar Patel Memorial Lecture at Akashvani (All India Radio), reported The Indian Express.

Manned space mission Gaganyaanis likely to be launched in 2026; sample return mission Chandrayaan-4 in 2028, and the much-anticipated India-US joint NISAR venture in 2025.

Chairman Somanath also disclosed that Chandrayaan-5 would be a joint moon-landing mission with Japan space agency JAXA. Originally named LUPEX, or Lunar Polar Exploration, the time frame of this new mission was not specified but is likely after 2028.

He also stated that this would be a very heavy mission – the rover on Chandrayaan-3 was only 27 kg in weight while in Chandrayaan-5 it would be 350 kg.

“It would be a very heavy mission in which the lander would be provided by India, while the rover would come from Japan. It is a science heavy mission which would take us one step closer to landing human beings on the moon,” Somanath was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.

The Indian space body has plans of having a manned mission to the moon by 2040.

During his address at Akashvani, the ISRO chief also emphasised the need to grow India’s space sector, aiming to increase its contribution on a global scale to at least 10 per cent in this decade, up from the current 2 per cent.

Somanath said that the participation of the private sector, new policies enabling entrepreneurship were required for this growth.

“Several industries, big and small, have expressed interest in investing in the space sector. And ISRO is doing its best to help them come and participate. Lots of activities which could traditionally be done only by ISRO are now being done by private industry,” Somanath added according to The Indian Express.