India’s Gaganyaan mission gets support of Australia, tracking facility in Cocos Island

Left to right: Enrico Palermo (Head of the ASA), Dr K. Sivan (Chair of ISRO), Barry O’Farrell (High Commissioner of Australia to India), Gitesh Sarma (Indian envoy to Australia). (Pic by Australian high commission)

New Delhi: Australia will be supporting India's manned mission to space-Gaganyaan by providing a temporary ground station facility in Cocos Islands. Cocos (Keeling) Islands is part of Australia's external territory in the Indian Ocean.

The Australian Space Agency spokesperson said that it is "leading cross-government coordination on ISRO’s request to place temporary ground station tracking facilities in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands to support the Gaganyaan missions". 

"This includes facilitating advice to ISRO from a number of Commonwealth agencies which will need to grant approvals for the project to go ahead," he added. 

India will be the fourth country to launch humans into space, with its Gaganyaan project. Gaganyaan is targeted for December 2021 and currently the training of the astronauts is taking place in Russia.

Australia announced a new pact with India on Space last week. The amendment to the Memorandum of Understanding between the Australian Space Agency and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), builds on the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between the two nations and was announced by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison last year.

Australian Minister for Industry, Science and Technology Karen Andrews said, “Discussions are already underway for Australia to host vital tracking infrastructure as part of India’s Gaganyaan missions, which will place India as the fourth country to put humans in space.”

The Memorandum of Understanding between the nations was signed by Head of the Australian Space Agency, Enrico Palermo and Chair of ISRO and Head of the Indian Department of Space, Dr K Sivan on 17th February, 2020.