Over the course of three days, the Gaganyaan Mission, also known as “Sky Craft” in Hindi, seeks to send the astronauts into a 400-kilometer orbit.
PM Modi unveils the four-person Gaganyaan space mission crew
As stated in a government release, the four officers are Prashanth Balakrishnan Nair, Ajit Krishnan, Angad Pratap, and Shubhanshu Shukla.
The officers were chosen from a pool of Indian Air Force pilots following rigorous physical and psychological testing.
During a function on Tuesday at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram, Prime Minister Narendran Modi gave the four “astronaut wings.”
“The four astronaut-designates are not just four names or individuals, they are four ‘Shakti’ of carrying the aspirations of 140 crore Indians into space,” he remarked, earning a standing ovation for all four of them.
“An Indian is traveling to space forty years later. The timing, countdown, and rocket, however, belong to us this time,” he continued, citing Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma, who flew to space in 1984 as a member of a Soviet mission.
A livable space capsule will be launched as part of the Gaganyaan mission, which would cost India roughly 90.23 billion rupees ($1.1 billion). The capsule will splash down in the Indian Ocean upon return.
India, which has emerged as a leader in low-cost space launches globally, would become just the fourth country, following the US, China, and Russia, to launch a crewed mission into space on a homegrown rocket.
What is the aim of the Gaganyaan Mission?
The Gaganyaan project aims to demonstrate the potential of human spaceflight by sending a four-person crew into a 400-kilometer orbit for a three-day trip, and then safely returning them to Earth by landing in Indian Ocean waters.
