India to send two astronauts in space - ISRO

New Delhi: India will send two astronauts into space using an indigenous rocket and an announcement for this is likely to be made within a couple of months, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) said on Tuesday.

In an interview to a private channel, ISRO chairman K. Radhakrishnan said that in the next few weeks, the government may announce approval of India's most expensive scientific programme - that of putting two Indian astronauts in space.

With this, India is set to join the select club of the US, Russia and china that have human space flight capabilities. The announcement has come two days before ISRO's test for an indigenous Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) rocket.

Radhakrishnan told NDTV that India has technical capabilities for sending astronauts into the space. He said that the government approval for this Rs. 124 billion venture may come in a couple of months.

On being asked if it will be announced in the Prime Minister's Independence Day speech, the ISRO chief confirmed that "the approval and announcement could happen even before that."

Radhakrishnan says ISRO is ready to launch Indian astronauts by 2017. "As of now what we have is a pre-project study," he said, adding that the astronaut programme will be implemented in phases.

The first phase is to test the unmanned crew module and a service module in space four years from now. After that the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) will be used to launch the Indian astronauts.

Countdown begins for rocket launch with Indian cryo-engine

Bangalore:The countdown to launch a heavy rocket with an Indian cryogenic engine to inject an advanced communication satellite in the geo-synchronous orbit began on Wednesday at the Sriharikota spaceport in Andhrapradesh, a space agency official said.

"The countdown began at 11.27 a.m. at our Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. All preparations for launching the geo-synchornous satellite launch vehicle (GSLV-D3) carrying the geo-stationary experimental satellite (GSAT-4) on Thursday at 16.27 IST are progressing satisfactorily," ISRO Director S. Satish told the sources.

The spaceport is located on a small island off the Bay of Bengal, about 80 km north-east of Chennai.

The preparations during the 29-hour countdown includes filling up the second stage and four strap-ons of the 416-tonne rocket with about 200 tonnes of liquid propellants.

"In the run up to lift-off, the cryogenic upper stage will also be filled with propellants. Certain mandatory checks and charging of batteries on the 50-meter tall rocket and the 2.2-tonne satellite onboard will be carried during the countdown," Satish said.

Readiness of the ground stations at Sriharikota, Biak in Indonesia and the master control facility at Hasan in Karnataka, about 180 km from here, will also be tested by the space scientists and engineers simultaneously.

INDIA: New regulation for university accreditation

India's University Grants Commission has framed a regulation making it mandatory for all universities and colleges to be certified by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), commission chairman Professor Sukhdeo Thorat said last weekend, writes Ananya Dutta for The Hindu. The move is an attempt to assess and thereafter ensure the quality of education offered in institutions of higher education, Thorat explained.

Currently, certification from the NAAC, an autonomous body headquartered Bangalore and established by the University Grants Commission in 1994, is voluntary. "While there has been progress in the absolute numbers of students with access to higher education since the time of independence, the enrolment rate of about 11% in India is much less than the world average of 23% and not much higher than the 7% of Africa," he said.

The problem has been addressed in the 11th Five-year Plan, with the government announcing the creation of 1,440 new institutions including seven Indian Institutes of Technology and seven Indian Institutes of Management, which Thorat described as the "second wave of higher education in the country".