Gaganyaan: PM Modi Announces Names Of Astronauts Chosen For India’s Crewed Mission, Meets Them
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Gaganyaan: The names of the astronaut designates for the Gaganyaan programme, India’s first human spaceflight project, have been announced. Prime Minister Narendra Modi met the astronaut designates on February 27, 2024, at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. The four men who will fly to low-Earth orbit aboard the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO’s) Gaganyaan Crew Module are P Balakrishnan Nair, Ajit Krishnan, Angad Pratap, and Shubhanshu Shukla.
Nair, Krishnan, and Pratap will serve as group captains, while Shukla will serve as the wing commander, news agency PTI reported.
VIDEO | PM Modi meets astronaut-designates for Gaganyaan Mission – Group Captain P Balakrishnan Nair, Group Captain Ajit Krishnan, Group Captain Angad Pratap and Wing Commander S Shukla – at Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) in Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram.
(Full video… pic.twitter.com/dhaYddPzdk
— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) February 27, 2024
The prime minister bestowed astronaut wings to the designates and reviewed the progress of the Gaganyaan programme.
The first crewed mission of the Gaganyaan programme is scheduled to be launched in 2025, Union Minister of Science and Technology Jitendra Singh announced in February 2024.
More about Gaganyaan
Gaganyaan’s aim is to send astronauts to an orbit of 400 kilometres, and bring them back safely to Earth by making them splash in Indian sea waters. In other words, the programme’s objective is to demonstrate indigenous capability to undertake human spaceflight missions to low-Earth orbit.
The goals of Gaganyaan’s uncrewed missions are technology demonstration, safety and reliability verification. The uncrewed missions are aimed at studying the spacecraft systems before conducting the first crewed spaceflight.
ISRO launched the first uncrewed flight mission of the Gaganyaan programme on October 21, 2023, at 10:00 am IST. Known as the Test Vehicle Development Flight (TV-D1) or Test Vehicle Abort Flight, the mission, carrying an uncrewed Crew Module and a Crew Escape System, took off from the First Launch Pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh. Gaganyaan TV-D1 is an important mission because it demonstrated the performance of the Crew Escape System, and is the first mission of Gaganyaan’s uncrewed flight tests.
ISRO will launch humanoid robot Vyommitra to space in the third quarter of 2024. The Vyommitra mission is a part of the uncrewed flight tests of the Gaganyaan programme.
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