Gaganyaan: Astronauts close to completing Russia screening

BENGALURU: Two batches of astronaut-elects for Ganganyaan—a total of seven men—have completed the screening process in Russia and the final batch of five men will be leaving for Russia this weekend, sources told TOI.
In September first week, India picked 12 test pilots who cleared the level-1 screening for the Gaganyaan programme, a human spaceflight programme that envisages to send Indian astronauts to space by 2022.
India will eventually select the final crew members, likely to be two or three, from these 12 astronauts. “Since Russia could not accommodate all 12 in one go, we had sent four of them in the first batch and three more in the second. Now, the last five will leave either on Friday or Saturday,” a source said.
The Institute of Aerospace Medicine (IAM), which selected the 12 astronauts from 60 applicants, had completed one round of screening, and now Glavkosmos—a subsidiary of Roscosmos State Corporation (Russia’s space agency)—will screen these astronauts.
In July, Isro’s Human Space Flight Centre (HSFC) and Glavkosmos finalised an agreement that will see the Russian agency provide advanced training to Gaganyaan astronauts.
“Since training will happen both in India and Russia, even Glavkosmos will screen the astronauts and our screening parametres will now have to match with them,” the source said, adding that once all 12 astronauts have completed this process—each batch takes 10 days in Russia—we will have to see how many will make it to the training phase.
Glavkosmos will render services on consulting support of selection of candidates for the Indian astronauts, providing medical examination of the candidates for access to space flight related training program and providing space flight related training for the Indian astronauts selected on the basis of the medical examination.
Once they clear the screening, IAM will provide basic training for the shortlisted astronauts, who will then proceed to Russia for an advance training, before returning to India for mission-specific training.
The Level-1 of astronaut selection at IAM included extensive physical exercise tests, lab investigations, radiological tests, clinical tests & evaluation on various facets of their psychology.
Air Marshal MS Butola, director general medical services (Air) said on Thursday: “We have completed the task of selecting the astronauts well within time and completed it well. The task ahead is complex, intense and time consuming. Many advanced countries have faced challenges and abandoned it (human space programme).”
Butola added that India is the first country to live-launch a human into space unlike others who had sent animals as an experiment prior to actual human missions.
IAM, it’s commandant Air Commodore Anupam Banerjee, said has completed the first of the 16 tasks assigned to them as part of Gaganyaan. He did not elaborate what the others were. “The initial selection is the first of the 16 tasks given to IAM. The remaining ones will be more complex,” he said.
TIMELINE:
* August 15, 2018: PM Modi announces human spaceflight programme—Gaganyaan
* 2022: Deadline set by Modi for execution of Gaganyaan
* Feb 2019: Isro hands over documents to IAF for astronaut selection & training
* June 2019: IAM starts process of selecting astronauts
* July 2019: Isro and Roscosmos finalise agreement for astronaut training
* Sept 2019: 12 applicants clear Level-1 of selection and get designated as astronauts
* Oct-Nov 2019: They travel to Russia for second level screening