At a gathering of the Indian Air Force, he made the comments while presenting the 38th Air Chief Marshal P C Lal Memorial Lecture.

A number of airmen, including current IAF Chief Air Chief Marshal V R Chaudhari and former IAF Chief Air Chief Marshal RKS Bhadauria (Retd), were present.

“We must consider space to be a strategic asset of the country. And we ought to develop that capacity in a “Atmanirbhar” (self-reliant) manner in order to sustain it. It is highly significant. And we have developed a blueprint on how to construct it,” added Somanath, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

And this is the India we envision for the country’s 100th anniversary of independence. We want to see India leading the globe in space exploration,” he remarked.

He also discussed the “Space roadmap for Amrit Kaal” during his talk, which outlined the numerous areas that the nation must focus on over the course of the following 25 years.

The 25-year period from 2022 to 2047, or from the year India celebrated its 75th anniversary of gaining independence from the British, to the year it commemorates the 100th anniversary of that milestone, has been designated by the government as “Amrit Kaal.”

Somanath listed four levels—strategic, spacecraft, innovation and exploration; continuing human space flight; lowering launch costs; and, in that order, the business of space travel—that the nation must achieve at in order for its space plan to be successful.

In the Powerpoint slide he gave on the roadmap, other topics such as space parks, space tourism, a worldwide data solution, a global manufacturing hub, and space mining with set dates were also addressed.

He also discussed India’s Gaganyaan and Chandrayaan missions in his talk. He stated that Chandrayaan-3 is scheduled to launch in the middle of July.

The goal of Chandrayaan-3 is to send a rover down to the moon.

Later, Somanath told reporters that although no date had been set, the ISRO was hoping to launch the mission as early as July 12 and as late as July 19.

The ISRO director stressed the need of sustainability in space throughout his speech. He stated in his slides including information on space debris that “80% of the nearly 14,000 satellites in orbit are not functioning.” The Air Force Association (AFA) organised the memorial talk.

In 1939, Air Chief Marshal P C Lal received his commission in the IAF. During the Burma Campaign of World War II, he received the Distinguished Flying Cross. During the conflict of 1965, he was the Vice Chief of the Air Staff.

He served as the Chairman and Managing Director of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) in 1966 while on assignment. His remarkable leadership during the 1971 war as the seventh Chief of the Air Staff proved to be a crucial element in India’s victory and the liberation of Bangladesh.

For his achievements throughout the two wars, Lal received the Padma Bhushan in 1966 and the Padma Vibhushan in 1972. He was appointed the Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of Indian Airlines after leaving the company in 1973, and he later became the chairman of Air India.