Deeper into space

Gaganyaan India’s ambitious human spaceflight programme, aiming to shoot off Indian astronauts is just the beginning of many more ambitious next chapters, involving everyone from medicine to material sciences for building human habitats in space

Four decades after Rakesh Sharma's milestone space odyssey, India is all set to celebrate another giant leap.

As preparations for the new mission take off, four astronauts- epitomising India's advancement in space technology - are gearing up for the country's first crewed Indian space mission, Gaganyaan.

Group Captain Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair, Group Captain Ajit Krishnan, Group Captain Angad Pratap, and Wing Commander Shubhanshu Shukla, chosen after rigorous testing and extensive training in the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)'s Bengaluru facility and Russia, will be the team that will orbit 400 km above Earth for a three-day mission.

According to ISRO, the key elements needed for the Gaganyaan mission include developing critical technologies like a safe launch vehicle for astronauts, a life support system to keep them comfortable in space, a way for the crew to escape in case of emergency, and plans for their training, recovery, and medical care.

Before this human mission, there would be three dry runs, two with payloads and one without any payload, as quoted in a report by Dr Aloke Kumar of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, whose laboratory is developing the biological payload for Gaganyaan.

The earliest launch date for the mission is April 2024.

Kumar and his lab have developed bricks using bacteria and soil samples stimulating the soils of the Moon and Mars.

The idea is that whenever humans have to make settlements on the Moon or Mars, they could use components from there like Lunar or Martian soil and bacteria and other components from Earth to make building blocks.

"Our biological payload for Gaganyaan is a bacteria in a box. Understanding the effect of space on biology is now key.