Kochi: The first batch of the crew recovery team of India’s manned space programme, Mission Gaganyaan, completed Phase-1 of training at the Indian Navy’s Water Survival Training Facility (WSTF) here today.
Utilising the state-of-the-art facility, the team comprising Indian Naval Divers and Marine Commandos underwent recovery training of crew modules in varied sea conditions.
The two weeks training capsule covered a brief on the conduct of the mission, actions to be taken during medical exigencies and familiarisation with different aircraft and their rescue equipment. The training also validated the Standard Operating Procedures formulated jointly by the Indian Navy and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).
On the concluding day, Dr. Mohan M, Director of Human Space Flight Centre, ISRO witnessed the recovery demonstration and interacted with the team. The team trained at WSTF will now be involved in the recovery of test launches planned by ISRO in the forthcoming months, the Ministry of Defence stated today.
ISRO plans to launch the first unmanned test rocket in February next year. ISRO’s chairman Sreedhara Panicker Somanath announced in April this year that India’s heaviest rocket Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV Mk-3), also known as LVM3, will be used for the unmanned test flight and the crew module will land in the sea.
It may be mentioned that India began its national manned space programme in 2006 which could not take off because of low funding. As per the initial plans, the country’s first manned flight was to be in 2013, which was then shifted to 2016. It was on December 18, 2014, when the boilerplate of the reentry capsule had been launched aboard the sub-orbital first test flight of ISRO’s GSLV Mark III rocket, but funding limitations resulted in no testing of an all-up spacecraft, which was to be launched by the GSLV-III launch vehicle.
Finally, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the Gaganyaan mission in 2018. Thereafter, in December 2022, ISRO announced having developed a spacecraft for carrying astronauts to space as part of the Gaganyaan mission which has been supported by Russia, Japan, and NASA besides the academia and industry. Reportedly, nearly 700 industry partners were involved with the ISRO in the mission. The four astronauts identified for the mission, who are Indian Air Force test pilots, were sent to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Russia in 2020 where they completed generic space flight training. Since their return in 2021, they have been undergoing Gaganyaan Mission-specific training at the Astronaut Training Facility in Bengaluru. The first crewed flight of Gaganyaan, carrying 3 Indian astronauts on a short orbital test flight, is slated for sometime in 2024.
– global bihari bureau
