India has not made any offer to purchase Russian spacecraft: ISRO chief

BANGALORE - Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) chief K. Rashakrishnan on Friday denied the reports that India has made offer to purchase Russian Soyuz-TMA spacecraft.

“No, that’s all what the newspapers write,” Radhakrishnan said.

India is in search of a spacecraft to undertake the country’s maiden human space flight scheduled for 2015-16.

Radhakrishnan’s reaction came just a day after a section of Russian media reported about the deal.

“We have a human space flight programme and ISRO is going to put two Indians in an orbit around the earth,” he said.

“That’s our plan. Studies have been conducted. There is a pre-project which is already going on to study some of the critical technologies. And we have a project report which we have given to the Government for approval,” Radhakrishnan added.

The manned mission programme envisages development of a fully autonomous orbital vehicle carrying two or three crew members to over 300 kilometers in earth orbit.

The Union Science and Technology Ministry has already carried out a detailed study on technical and managerial issues related to undertaking manned space missions.(ANI)