India will launch its first manned space mission by 2022, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Wednesday in his last Independence Day speech ahead of the 2019 general election.
Modi, a powerful speaker who will seek re-election in the world’s biggest democracy early 2019, used the speech to broadcast his government’s achievements, amid concerns about lack of jobs and rising violence against the Muslim minority.
The general elections are due to be held in May 2019.
Wearing a flowing saffron turban, the Hindu nationalist leader also announced the plan to take the “Indian tricolor to space” in a manned mission that would make India the fourth nation to launch one, after the US, Russia and China.
“India is proud of our scientists, who are excelling in their research and are at the forefront of innovation,” Modi said from the ramparts of the Mughal-era Red Fort in Delhi to a crowd numbering in the tens of thousands.
“In the year 2022 or, if possible, before, India will unfurl the tricolor in space.”
Months after Modi’s election in 2014, India became the first Asian nation to reach Mars when its first mission to the red planet entered orbit, at a cost of 74 million dollars, or less than the budget of the Hollywood space blockbuster “Gravity”.
Source: NAN
