After the so-called success of Chandrayan 2, ISRO chairman, K Sivan is all set to make 2020 an eventful year with the talks of first manned orbital spacecraft GaganYaan to be launched from India in 2022.
He stated a lot of design work has been completed for GaganYaan and several tests will be conducted n 2020. He also mentioned that the four astronauts have been selected and will begin their training for the third week of January in Russia.
He further mentioned that the first unmanned flight of Gaganyaan is also targeted this year and is looking for more than 25 missions this year.
The reports said that the two batches of astronauts ie total of seven men have been selected for Gaganyaan and have completed the screening process in Russia and the final five will move to Russia this weekend. Of these, the final four have been picked, as said by Sivan.
The Institute of Aerospace Medicine (IAM) picked 12 test pilots out of 60 applicants who cleared level-1 screening for Gaganyaan and now Glavkosmos— a subsidiary of Roscosmos State Corporation Corporation (Russia’s space agency)— has completed the screening selecting the final four.
The ISRO’s Human Space Flight Centre (HSFC) and Glavkosmos finalized an agreement in July that they will watch the Russian Agency in providing advanced training to the final 4 astronauts of Gaganyaan.
A source said, as the training will happen in both the countries- India and Russia, therefore Glavkosmos also screened the astronauts.
Glavkosmos will be a service provider on consulting support of the selection of candidates, providing medical examination of candidates for space flight related programs and will also provide space-related training based on medical examination.
Extensive physical exercise tests, radiological tests, clinical tests, lab investigations & evaluation on various facets of their psychology were included in Level-1 of astronaut selection at IAM.
As said by the Director-General medicals service (AIR), Air Marshal MS Butola, the task of selecting the candidates has seen completed well in time. The tasks ahead are complex, intense and time-consuming. Many advanced countries have abandoned after facing it.
He further added India will be the first country to live-launch a human into space as many countries have sent animals as an experiment.
IAM It’s commandant Air Commodore Anupam Banerjee said he has completed the first 16 tasks of Gaganyaan assigned to him. These tasks will be the base of selection and the remaining ones will be more complex.
More about gaganYaan
Gaganyaan is a crewed orbital spacecraft that is in process of designing to send three humans to space for a minimum of seven days as part of the Indian Human Spaceflight Programme.
It will be India’s first manned mission and would make India the fourth nation to send humans to space after the US, Russia, and China. The mission was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his Independence day speech in 2019.
An amount of Rs 10,000 crore has been approved by the Union cabinet on Friday (December 28) for this mission, The mission aims to send three astronauts to space for a minimum of seven days. The mission is expected to be achieved by 2022 when India will celebrate 75 years of Independence.
For the launch, ISRO will deploy its biggest rocket, the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III (GSLV Mk III) from Sriharikota.