The training Indian astronauts receive in the US for a proposed flight to the International Space Station, as per a recently signed US-India agreement, will help in preparations for the Gaganyaan manned mission, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman S Somanath said Thursday.
The agreement was signed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to the US. “There was a statement on human spaceflight which was about India and the US working together for a combined human spaceflight to the ISS. This particular activity is something that the US wants and India also finds it beneficial for the Indian space program because once an Indian prepares to go to the ISS they will undergo a training program in the US and they are going to come back and discuss how the training and skills were imparted and this will help design our Gaganyaan better,” Somanath said.
ISRO, which had earlier set a target of 2022 for carrying out the Gaganyaan mission, has now pushed the timeline for the mission to late 2024 or early 2025 to ensure the safety of the astronauts.
The ISRO chairman, who spoke to the media on the sidelines of a G20 meeting of space economy leaders in Bengaluru on Thursday, indicated that the Gaganyaan programme was trying to gather more expertise to ensure that the spacecraft is adequately designed and safe for flying astronauts. Somanath however refuted suggestions that Indian astronauts will first fly to the ISS on a US mission before a Gaganyaan mission is attempted.
“We have not signed any agreement or MoU on this. There has been a discussion at the highest level on having an Indian fly to the International Space Station with training in US facilities. This much is decided at the highest level and we have to work out the details of it in the coming days. An agreement will be signed by NASA and ISRO on this account,” the ISRO chairman said.
“What I hope is that the agreement will define how many people are going to be trained, how many people are actually going to fly to ISS, what type of technical and scientific engagement will happen as part of this understanding. We are in the process of working these things out and we are connected to NASA and we are discussing it in different layers,” Somanath said.
Earlier in June the ISRO chairman had stated that ‘safety-first’ had become the priority of the plans for the first Indian manned mission to space and that time frames for the mission would be decided on the basis of ISRO’s confidence in sending astronauts into space and bringing them back safely.
“Today we have designed the Gaganyaan only on the basis of our one experienced Indian astronaut — Rakesh Sharma. Every now and then I have to call up Rakesh Sharma and find out ‘Sir, how is the handle on the spacecraft’ because he is the only person who can tell us,” the ISRO chairman said.
“If you call someone else no one is going to speak to you. We have four astronauts who have undergone training and they know some of the design. The Gaganyaan craft is currently designed from the information provided by these people,” he said.
Somanath said that by training in the US for a flight to the ISS the Indian astronauts from the Indian Air Force who have been training for India’s first manned mission will be able to provide inputs for the better design of the Gaganyaan spacecraft for India’s maiden manned mission.
“We have to discuss (with the Indian astronauts) and find out the various features – how they sit, how they handle, how they dress, how they control emergencies, how they handle oxygen deficiencies, how they handle replacements. There are so many issues in a cockpit like environment and if we have more and more experienced people our designs will be better. We see it as a possibility,” the ISRO chairman said about the collaboration with the US. Four Indian astronauts selected for the Gaganyaan mission have been trained so far at facilities in Russia.
Somanath said on Thursday that the manned ISRO mission is over a year down the line. “The current schedule is that there will be an unmanned mission in the beginning of next year. This year we will have the abort missions. The manned mission is being talked about for the end of 2024 or early 2025. It depends on various other scenarios,” the ISRO chairman said.
Last month the ISRO chief had indicated that it has decided to adopt a cautious approach to India’s human spaceflight program by putting the safety of the astronauts who will fly on the mission at the core of the project rather than target dates for achieving the mission.
“We have a different way of thinking now. The thinking is that we do not want to rush the decision. The primary objective of human space flight is a sure shot, safe mission. We have redefined it in such a way that we will achieve success in the very first attempt,” Somnath said last month about the proposed Gaganyaan mission on the sidelines of an international conference on Spacecraft Mission Operations.
The first human spaceflight mission had initially been given a 2022 target by the centre in order to coincide with 75 years of Indian independence but the program was thrown out of gear by the Covid pandemic which engulfed the country between 2022 and 2021, he said.
“Due to the pandemic we had a huge delay in what we wanted to achieve because it was not a production launch. We have to engineer it and work with industry so it was not possible for one and a half years. So we missed the schedule. We could not align the program with the Amrith Mahotsav (75 years of Independence),” the ISRO chairman said.
In order to achieve the redefined mission objective of safety and a sure shot mission ISRO has “enhanced the testing and demonstration missions substantially in the recent time and that involves additional abort missions,” Somnath said.
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