“Indo-US Mission Won’t Delay Gaganyaan, Will Boost Capabilities”: ISRO Chief

Far from delaying the Gagnyaan mission, the Indo-US Axiom-4 mission will actually help ISRO carry out the landmark flight and augment its capabilities, the space agency’s Chairman, Dr S Somanath, has told NDTV.

In an exclusive conversation on Tuesday, the ISRO chief also spoke about how Indian astronaut Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla going to the International Space Station (ISS) in the middle or end of next year as part of the Axiom-4 mission will boost India’s understanding of human spaceflight.

Under the Gaganyaan mission, India plans to send humans to an orbit of 400 km above Earth’s surface for at least one day and bring them back

“Both have no connection in terms of the progress of the work. The progress on Gaganyaan is very good. Of course, there have been some delays… that is not connected with the mission to ISS, it is only in terms of qualification of certain systems that we have yet to complete. I believe that the ISS mission will only add value to what we are doing in Gaganyaan because we are only in the process of development of the first crew module and service module,” Dr Somanath emphasised.

“It is also about the protocols associated with sending humans to space, with which we have no experience. So we bank on the training of these people (French, Russian and American experts). India’s Gaganyatris have already undergone training under the Russian model and when they train in the US, it will add value to the process we have conceived. There are many things we need to plan and do – their preparation, training, health monitoring and even the features of the crew module. So there won’t be a delay, there will be value addition, it will be an augmenting factor,” he added.

India has picked four candidates for the Gaganyaan mission. Of these, Group Captain Shukla is India’s main astronaut for the Axiom-4 mission and Group Captain Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair will be the backup astronaut. Incidentally, the Axiom-4 mission is already gathering an Indian, likeable moniker – ‘Mission Akash Ganga’.  

“PM Narendra Modi has announced the continuation of Gaganyaan along with the building of a space station and going to the Moon. That means we need to have a pool of astronauts of Gaganyatris to continue this process. They need to develop the knowledge, the skill, become the trainer of trainers, and also help us build the architecture or systems based on their experience. Currently, we are banking on the only astronaut we had, Rakesh Sharma, and them,” the ISRO chief said. 

‘At The Right Time’

To a question on whether it would be right to say that India has been late in getting to human spaceflight but is leapfrogging, Dr Somanath stressed that the country is not late but is doing things at an appropriate time.

“When the nation reached a certain threshold of technology or capability, then we decided to go into this. It’s not something we need to do urgently. Human spaceflight is a crucial capability that we have to develop at some point in time in the history of our space programme and the time has now come for it to be done. We are not delayed in my opinion, this is the right time… We are working with other nations on this, because this is connected to humanity, it is not about technological prowess alone,” he said.