Gaganyaan: IAF completes Level 1 astronaut selection

Selection process at Bengaluru-based Institute of Aerospace Medicine

India’s maiden manned space mission, Gaganyaan just took the first big step. The Level-1 of Indian astronaut selection has been completed at the Bengaluru-based Institute of Aerospace Medicine, attached to the Indian Air Force (IAF).

The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) has set a deadline of December 2021 to send three Indians to space and bring them back. The IAF on Friday informed that the selected test pilots had undergone extensive physical tests at the Institute.

In a tweet, the Air Force announced: “Selected Test Pilots underwent extensive physical exercise tests, lab investigations, radiological tests, clinical tests and evaluation on various facets of their psychology.” IAF and Isro had decided earlier that the first batch of Indian astronauts would be test-pilots.

In May this year, Isro and IAF had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for crew selection and training. The ambitious Gaganyaan mission will take three Indians to space, although Isro Chairman K Sivan had indicated recently that there could be four.

The selected candidates will have to go through basic training in India followed by advanced training abroad. The Russian agency Roscosmos had announced recently that four candidates for the mission will be trained at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Centre.

Talks are also on to supply space suits, crew seats and windows for the selected astronauts.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the Gaganyaan mission on August 15, 2018. Once the Centre sanctioned Rs 10,000 crore for the project, Isro established an exclusive Human Spaceflight Centre in Bengaluru, early this year.

The manned mission will be preceded by the first unmanned launch in December 2020 and the second in July 2021. Isro has proposed to build the same crew module as the manned mission for these, and monitor them extensively. Any deficiency would be corrected to give scientists confidence for the manned mission.

Trials for the mission would be critical since the selected crew would have to be put up in an enclosed space for seven days.