| The director general of medical services (AIR), air marshal Padma Bandopadhyay told reporters here the Indian Society of Aerospace Medicine (ISAM) is seeking to collaborate with ISRO to develop a spacecraft to carry a man to space. |
| However, she sounded a note of caution, saying the space lab was at a conceptual stage and discussions with ISRO were also in a preliminary stage. The proposed lab, planned to be set up at the Institute of Aerospace Medicine (IAM), IAF premises here, would focus on the nature of effects that a man in space in long duration would have and related aspects. |
| Factors like zero gravity, physiological and psychological ones and matters pertaining to simulation and disorientation and things of that nature are proposed to be studied there. |
| She refused to hazard a guess on a possible time-frame for India's manned mission, noting that it depended on many factors. But officials said it's bound to take some years. |
| But she expressed confidence that sending a man to space by India is not unrealistic. "It will happen one day. We can't run away from it. Space is a reality. Date and time, we will not know. When the government says, we will go ahead. The project will be dictated by national requirement." |
| India's lunar mission Chandrayaan-1, slated for 2007-08, is an unmanned one. This mission is aimed at expanding the scientific knowledge about the moon and upgrading India's technological capability. |
| The ISRO chairman said department clearance had been received for making reusable and recoverable launch vehicles and detailed designing had started. |
| An exclusive satellite for the study of tropical climate would be launched in 2008-09, which was a joint Indo-French mission. The designing will be done by France and India and the satellite will be launched aboard a PSLV, he said. |
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