Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced on Tuesday the names of four astronauts who will go into low-Earth orbit as part of the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) Gaganyaan mission, which will be the country’s first space mission. He disclosed this while visiting the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.
Angad Prathap, Ajit Krishnan, Shubanshu Shukla, and Group Captain Prashanth Balakrishnan Nair have been chosen to be the astronauts on India’s first crewed space mission. They have expertise as test pilots and are all wing commanders or group captains in the Indian Air Force (IAF). This means they are already trained to react fast if something goes wrong.
The four astronauts are getting trained at the space agency’s astronaut training facility in Bengaluru. The astronauts were chosen from the Institute of Aerospace Medicine, part of the IAF. In the end, only three of them will get the opportunity to fly into space as part of the Gaganyaan project.
The Prime Minister stated that the Gaganyaan mission will take our space industry to new heights. By then, India’s economy will boost and become the third-largest country in the world. He further mentioned the contribution of women in the space industry and stated,
India’s Nari Shakti is playing a pivotal role in the space sector. Be it Chandrayaan or Gaganyaan, no such mission can be imagined without women scientists.
The Gaganyaan Mission will show the capabilities of human spaceflight and will take the astronauts to 400 kilometres above the surface of the Earth for 3 days. After the mission, they will be back on Earth and land in the Indian Ocean.
The astronauts that will go on the mission are chosen because of their physical fitness and will be trained and provided with technical knowledge to ensure they remain healthy and fit during the mission.
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