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.
Group Captain Prashanth Balakrishnan Nair, Angad Prathap, Ajit Krishnan and Shubanshu Shukla have been selected to be the astronauts on India’s first crewed mission to space. 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.
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. Only three of them will eventually go to space as part of the Gaganyaan mission.
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 km 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.
CE20 engine passes final qualification tests
ISRO has reached a significant milestone in ensuring the safety and reliability of its CE20 cryogenic engine. This engine is a vital component powering the cryogenic stage of the LVM3 launch vehicle, which is designated for human-rated missions, including ISRO's Gaganyaan program aimed at sending Indian astronauts into space.
The seventh and final vacuum ignition test, part of a series, took place at the High Altitude Test Facility situated at ISRO Propulsion Complex in Mahendragiri. These vacuum ignition tests are vital as they simulate the conditions the engine will encounter during actual flight, especially in the vacuum of space.