New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday announced the names of the four astronauts that will fly to low-Earth orbit as part of the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Gaganyaan, which will be the first crewed Indian space mission. The PM made the announcement while visiting the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.
The four astronaut-designates selected for the Gaganyaan mission are Group Captain Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair, Group Captain Ajit Krishnan, Group Captain Angad Pratap and Wing Commander Shubhanshu Shukla. They are all either Wing Commanders or Group Captains in the Indian Air Force (IAF) and have extensive experience working as test pilots, which means they are already trained to be prepared to respond quickly in situations where something goes wrong.
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Monday 07 Oct. 2024
The four astronauts have been undergoing training at the space agency’s astronaut training facility in Bengaluru. The selection of the astronauts happened at IAF’s Institute of Aerospace Medicine.
ISRO and Glavkosmos (a subsidiary of Russian space agency Roscosmos) signed a memorandum of understanding for the training of four astronauts in June 2019. The four astronauts trained at Russia’s Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in February 2020 till March 2021.
American space agency NASA will also train an Indian astronaut for a mission to the International Space Station by the end of 2024, said the agency’s administrator Bill Nelson, during a visit to Delhi in 2023.
The Gaganyaan mission will demonstrate India’s human spaceflight capability by launching astronauts to an orbit 400 kilometres above the Earth for a 3-day mission. After that, they will be brought back to Earth safely with a landing in Indian sea waters.
“The country has come to know about the four Gaganyaan passengers. These are not just four names or four people. These are four powers who will take the aspirations of 140 crore Indians to space,” the Prime Minister said. “Forty years later, an Indian is going to space. But this time, the timing, the countdown and the rocket belong to us,” he added. Earlier, Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma (retired) went to space in 1984 as part of a Soviet mission.
The Prime Minister said that at a time when India is set to become the world’s third-largest economy, the Gaganyaan mission will take our space sector to new heights. He also noted the crucial role women scientists have been playing in the space technology sector. “India’s Nari Shakti is playing a pivotal role in the space sector. Be it Chandrayaan or Gaganyaan, no such mission can be imagined without women scientists,” he said.
The Prime Minister said India’s success in the space sector was not only sowing the seeds of scientific temperament in the young generation, but also helping it emerge as a dynamic global player in the 21st century by showcasing significant strides across sectors.
