Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti Congratulates India On 75 Years Of Independence From Space

Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti wished ISRO good luck for its upcoming projects, including NISAR and Ganayaan missions.

New Delhi: India will mark 75 years of independence from the British Raj on Monday, August 15, 2022. Wishes are pouring in from around the world for this historic moment. In a recent, Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti sent a video message from space wishing success to the country's space agency, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

“It is a pleasure to congratulate India on 75 years of Independence”, said Cristoforetti in a video message shared by, Indian Space Research Organisation, ISRO on Twitter. She said that for decades international agencies have worked together with ISRO on many space and science missions.

Further she spoke about ISRO’s upcoming projects and said “The cooperation continues today as Isro works on the development of the upcoming NISAR Earth Science Mission that will help us track disasters and helps us get a better understanding of our changing climate.”

The Italian astronaut also talked about the ambitious Gaganyaan mission and wished the India space organisation good luck, “On behalf of Nasa, the European Space Agency and all other agencies, I would like to wish Isro best of luck as it works on the Gaganyaan mission and gets ready to send humans into space”. 

The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission being jointly developed by Indian and American agencies, will measure Earth’s changing ecosystems, dynamic surfaces, and ice masses providing information about biomass, natural hazards, sea level rise, and groundwater, and will support a host of other applications, according to the nisar website. 

NISAR will be the first satellite mission to collect radar data in two microwave bandwidth regions, called the L-band and the S-band, to measure changes in our planet's surface less than a centimetre across.

The Gaganyaan Programme is India's first human spaceflight programme. ISRO aims to send humans to low-Earth orbit as part of this programme. 

ISRO earlier this week, achieved an important milestone in the Gaganyaan Project. It conducted a successful test-fire of the Low Altitude Escape Motor (LEM) of the Crew Escape System (CES), which will take the Gaganyaan crew module away from the launch vehicle in case any mishap occurs during the actual mission.