Prime Minister Narendra Modi has unveiled the name of Four Indian Astronauts shortlisted For Gaganyaan Mission. Gaganyaan Mission aims to send a three-member crew into a Low Earth Orbit of 400km and bring them back after three days.
Prime Minister has announced the names of the chosen four today in a program at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. The chosen four for the mission are Group Captain Prashanth Balakrishnan Nair, Group Captain Ajit Krishnan, Group Captain Angad Pratap, and Wing Commander Shubhanshu Shukla. The PM has presented ‘astronaut wings’ to the astronaut designates at the program.
This 4 ‘astronaut wings’ is an aspiration for 140 billion Indians in the upcoming future. After 40 years, someone from India will fly to space again. The last Indian Astronaut from India was Rakesh Sharma.
ISRO is supposed to send a robot to space in 2024 before sending the Astronauts to space. The four astronauts were chosen through rigorous physical and psychological tests before being selected. PM has also expressed how a healthy mind and healthy body is key necessity for such an important mission.
PM Modi posted on X and wrote “India’s prowess in the space sector shows the energy and vibrancy in our nation!”
Gaganyaan Mission : India’s Ambitious Program to space
Ahead of this ambitious project, the female robot to be send to outer space has been named “Vyommitra”. The meaning of the name translates to “Space Friend” in Sanskrit. The robot was first unveiled in on 22 January 2020, at the Human Spaceflight and Exploration symposium in Bengaluru.
India is set to become the fourth country, after the US, USSR, and China, to send human into space. The project, named after a Sanskrit word for ‘vehicle’ or ‘vehicle to the sky’, has been built at a cost of 90 billion rupees ( £897 million).
While the Soviet Union and US have been sending people into space since the 1960s, China has been a major player in the space race. In October 2003, a Chinese mission was the third to reach space, spending 21 hours and circling the earth 14 times. The US and China both have fully operational low Earth orbit (LEO) stations.
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