The Union government on Wednesday extended the services of Space Secretary and Space Commission Chairman K Sivan by one year. As the tenure of the chief was expected to get over by January 14, Sivan received an extension on Wednesday. The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the extension of tenure of Sivan for a period of one year beyond January 14, 2021, i.e. upto January 14, 2022 or until further orders, whichever is earlier.
The Union government has provided an extension to Sivan since the space programme’s flagship projects, Gaganyaan and Chandrayaan-3, are still pending and need to be rolled out. In 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his Independence Day speech announced that ISRO will send an astronaut to space by 2022. The Prime Minister said that when India touches 75 years' of Independence or even before that, a son or daughter of the country will go to space with an Indian flag by 2020.
If India's trial manned space mission becomes successful, then India will only be the fourth country to send an astronaut to space, after the US, China and Russia. Currently, the extension of Sivan's tenure is also viewed as a boost for the upcoming projects including the manned space mission.
Dr Sivan joined ISRO in 1982 and was assigned to work on a project relating to PSLV launch in the country. Sivan is known for his work in aerospace engineering, launch vehicle and mission design, space transportation systems engineering, control & guidance design and mission simulation software design, space transportation systems engineering and mission synthesis.
While working on PSLV’s launch, Sivan pitched strategies that ensured the clean performance of PSLV. The project also proved as a foundation to the launch of Space Transportation Systems Engineering in the country.
Currently, Sivan is also the chief architect of 6D trajectory simulation software SITARA, a backbone of real-time and non-real-time trajectory simulations of all ISRO launch vehicles.
(With inputs from IANS)