Gaganyaan Crew Member to Visit ISS in August: Union minister Jitendra Singh has stated that one of the four crew members chosen for Gaganyaan, the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) first human-crewed spacecraft, will be deployed to the International Space Station (ISS) after August.
The minister told the Lok Sabha on Friday that ISRO and NASA, the US space agency’s equivalent in India, would be working together on the space station visit.
“One ‘Gaganyaatri’ will undertake space travel to ISS as part of ISRO’s joint mission with NASA,” Singh stated.
This is a joint venture between NASA, ISRO, and Axiom Space, a private company recognised by NASA. For this cooperative mission, ISRO just inked a space flight agreement with Axiom Space,” he continued.
In response to a question regarding the “Axiom-4 Mission,” astronauts, and the Gaganyaan mission posed by Trinamool Congress MP Saugata Roy, Singh, the Minister of State (MoS) for Science and Technology, made his comment.
This will be the fourth private astronaut mission to the International Space Station (ISS), according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It is expected to launch from the agency’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida no sooner than August 2024.
The four Indian Air Force (IAF) “Gaganyaatris,” or elite fighter pilots, were unveiled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in February. They are wing commander Shubanshu Shukla and group captains Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair, Ajit Krishnan, and Angad Pratap.
In the meantime, the House was informed by Union Minister Singh that the Indian Air Force pilots are receiving training at ISRO’s Astronauts Training Facility in Bengaluru.
“They are halfway through their three-semester training program. Static mockup simulators and independent training simulators have been realised,” he said.
It is anticipated that the three-day Gaganyaan project would begin next year.
