India has announced the names of four pilots from its air force, informing that these four individuals will be part of the first space flight to be sent by India in the coming year.
These four pilots have been selected from many candidates who wished to go to space.
India has announced to send its first flight into space in the year 2025 and this mission has been named ‘Gaganyaan’ at the government level.
The purpose of the ‘Gaganyaan’ mission is to send astronauts to an orbit of 400 kilometers and bring them back after three days.
The space research agency in India, ‘ISRO’, is conducting several tests in preparation for this flight.
In October 2023, an important test conducted by ‘ISRO’ demonstrated how the crew could safely escape in case of a potential failure of the rocket going into space.
After the success of this test, a statement issued by ISRO stated that ‘Before sending astronauts into space in 2025, a test flight will take a robot into space in 2024 (this year).’
On Monday, at a ceremony held at the ‘ISRO Center’ located in the southern city of Thiruvananthapuram (formerly Trivandrum) in India, the four shortlisted pilots were described as ‘brave soldiers going on this important mission’.
The introduction of the four officers selected from the Indian Air Force is as follows: Group Captain Prashanth Balakrishnan Nair, Group Captain Ajeet Krishnan, Group Captain Angad Pratap, and Wing Commander Shubhanshu Shekla.
During the ceremony, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and ISRO Chief S Somanath were wearing air force badges with golden wings on their shirts, and Prime Minister Modi declared these individuals as a ‘source of pride for India’.
Narendra Modi said, ‘These are not just four names or four people. These are four powers that will take the dreams and aspirations of 1.4 billion Indian people into space. I congratulate them, I wish them well.’
The authorities have explained that these four individuals were selected from a group of pilots in the Indian Air Force, and they underwent physical and psychological tests before being shortlisted.
These individuals have undergone rigorous training for 13 months in Russia for space travel, and they are now moving forward with their intense schedule upon returning to their homeland. A video shown at the ceremony could see them exercising in the gym, swimming, and doing yoga.
On Monday, ‘ISRO’ also showed a glimpse of the spacecraft that will take these astronauts on a journey into space.
This spacecraft has been named ‘Vyom Mitra’, which is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘Space Friend’.
The Gaganyaan mission is India’s first human space program for which preparations are underway at various centers of ISRO.
The Gaganyaan project has been prepared at a cost of 90 billion Indian Rupees.
And if this mission is successful, India will become the fourth country to send humans into space after the Soviet Union, America, and China.
The Gaganyaan mission has generated a lot of interest in India, despite the fact that this mission is coming several decades after the Soviet Union and America sent their people and spacecraft into low Earth orbit.
Both the Soviet Union and America have had a presence in space since 1961. China became the third country to reach space in October 2003 when a Chinese mission spent 21 hours there and orbited the Earth 14 times.
Both America and China have fully operational space stations in low Earth orbit.
An Indian-origin astronaut, Rakesh Sharma, also went into space in early 1984. He was aboard a Russian spacecraft and spent approximately eight days in space.
Remember that last year, India made history by becoming the first country to land near the South Pole of the Moon.
A few weeks after this success on the Moon, Indian scientists launched India’s first observational mission ‘Aditya L1’ for the Sun, which is now in orbit.
India has announced new plans for space, stating that its goal is to establish a space station by 2035 and, with its help, send astronauts to the Moon by 2040.