Gaganyaan Mission: ISRO will send 3 Indians to space
A couple of weeks after PM Modi promised a manned spaceflight, ISRO chief K Sivan has come up with a roadmap. The mission, which has been dubbed 'Gaganyaan', will carry three astronauts into low earth orbit, following which the astronauts will spend 5-7 days in space. Currently, ISRO is actively looking for three candidates for the mission. Here are the details.
Detailing his plans for the mission, Sivan added that the Gaganyaan mission would take place in around 40 months, and might even be achieved six months before India's 75th Independence Day. Prior to the manned flight, two unmanned Gaganyaan test missions will be undertaken in 30 months, and 36 months from now. The entire cost of the mission will be Rs. 10,000cr.
According to minister of state for atomic energy, Jitendra Singh, the Gaganyaan mission will create employment for 15,000 people. Among them, 13,000 would be from industries/corporate, while a thousand will be taken from academia.
Meanwhile, ISRO is currently prioritizing recruitment. Pilots are preferred candidates, and the chosen candidates will jointly be trained by the Indian Air Force and ISRO. The space agency is also in constant touch with Air Force pilot Rakesh Sharma, who became the only Indian citizen to travel to space after taking part in the Soviet Union's "Intercosmos" program in 1984.
"We need to select our astronauts at the earliest as they would require at least three years for training. They could be from the air force or ISRO, or even a common man. Since it's our first mission, we would prefer a pilot," said Sivan.
Using ISRO's new GSLV Mk-III launch vehicle, a spacecraft will be launched into a low earth orbit of 300-400km above the surface of the Earth. After take-off, it will take 16 minutes for the astronauts to reach low earth orbit, where they will spend 5-7 days in a crew module. The crew module itself will be used for re-entry, which will take 36 minutes.
Insofar as technological requirements for the mission are concerned, Sivan said that several technologies had already been developed, and that research and development for a manned spaceflight began as early as in 2004. As a side note, Sivan added that ISRO would launch 19 missions between September 2018 and March 2019, including the much-awaited Chandrayaan-2 mission to the moon.
The Gaganyaan mission, if successful, would make India the fourth nation in the world to launch a manned spaceflight, after Russia, the US, and China.
