in February 2024 Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an announcement that will reshape the space race in this decade India revealed four astronauts who would operate the nation's very first crude orbital launch mission gagan set to launch next year in 2025 this will be a historic moment for the country and if successful will make India only the fourth nation in the the world after the USA Russia and China to independently send human beings into space this is how India truly joins the Space Race the gagan mission is the Indian space research organization's attempt at demonstrating
human space flight capability for the first time the ISRO plan involves launching a crew of three members into a geocentric low earth orbit of 400 km for a 3-day Mission and bringing them safely back to Earth the mission is presently scheduled to take off sometime in 2025 and will be the first crude spacecraft under the Indian human space flight program announced by prime minister Narendra Modi way back in August 2018 the gagan spacecraft was originally scheduled to launch in December 2020 but then the covid-19 pandemic hit and I'm sure we don't need any reminders of
how that affected everything in the world well after a few delays ISRO is back on track and is now confident of a launch date sometime in 2025 from the Satish dwan Space Center in the state of Andra Pradesh in India of course building a vehicle capable of space travel is no easy task even without the added complication of keeping human beings alive inside fortunately ISRO had a solid base to start on with their own LV M3 rocket the well-proven reliable heavy lift launcher it has a solid stage a liquid stage and a cryogenic stage for
propulsion all systems in the LV M3 launch vehicle have been reconfigured to meet human rating requirements and the resulting rocket has now been named the human rated LV M3 or simply HL mv3 a fix to the top of this launch rocket is the orbital module this consists of the crew capsule and the service module the former is the habitable space with an environment suitable for humans housing the crew interfaces life support systems avionics and deceleration systems it has a double walled construction consisting of a pressurized metallic inner structure and an unpressurized external structure with a
thermal protection system and it is designed for re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere to ensure safety of the crew during final descent the service module is for providing necessary support to the crew capsule while in orbit it is an unpressurized structure containing Ming the thermal system propulsion system power system avionics and deployment systems the HM lv3 also consists of a crew escape system powered by a set of quick acting High burn rate solid motors which ensures the crew module is taken to a safe distance in case of an emergency either at the Launchpad or during the
ascent phase of course a mission like this means everything needs to be tested and proven in the field before putting actual humans in it and ISRO has been hard at work the road map they laid out starts with integrated air drop tests before proceeding to the test vehicle Mission phase following this the project proceeds to pad abort tests and finally unmanned flights after that it's time to put humans in the capsule earlier in August 2023 ISRO successfully conducted a series of drug parachute deployment tests at the rail track rocket sled facility in chandigar in India
during the three comprehensive tests conducted at the facility a range of real world scenarios were simulated to rigorously evaluate the performance and reliability of the drug parachutes note that the drug parachutes are just two shoots of the 10 that make up part of the deceleration system presently the gagan mission is in the test vehicle Mission phase in October 2023 test vehicle D1 was launched and successfully demonstrated the crew module separation and safe recovery after an inflight abort sequence with the crew escape system working as designed the entire project is proceeding as planned in the coming
months ISRO has already planned to conduct around 20 major tests including three uncrewed missions of the hlmb 3 the last of these will feature a humanoid robot named vitra to assist with flight functions the next big update in the project came in February 2024 when the prime minister of India announced the four astronauts shortlisted from the Indian Air Force for the G Dian Mission group Captain Prashant Barak Krishna ner group Captain AIT Krishnan Wing Commander suban Shu Shukla and group Captain andag Pratap are set to make history for India's journey into space next year only
three of these will be part of a crew with one standing in as a backup so I've been using a new web browser and I really like it let me tell you a bit about Opera this is the most featur internet browsing experience I have ever had and that's interesting to me because I've never really given much thought to the features of a web browser aside from you know browsing the web but when you see what Opera has to offer you won't want to go back for example this automatic pop out view keeps my YouTube
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organize my browser tabs is keeping my online workflow more organized and productive than ever before the sidebar also lets me control my music player directly from inside the browser which just just makes life easy and speaking of easy Opera makes security easier than any other product I've used on the web this browser has a built-in ad blocker with no extension required and it even has an integrated VPN that I can quickly toggle on and off whenever I need to do some sensitive web browsing of course the best feature of all is that Opera is totally
free to use and shockingly easy to get set up so take my advice and give Opera a try for yourself I really think you're going to like it link Down Below in the description becoming an astronaut is often a second career they are usually candidates with extensive flight experience with various aircraft on Earth who then apply to become astronauts while isra hasn't made their specific selection criteria and process public it's fair to assume it isn't far off from other International organizations NASA for example needs candidates to have a degree in science as well as a
minimum of 1,000 hours of a flight experience in a jet engine powered aircraft to be eligible for its space programs for the gagan mission we know the minimum age for candidates was 39 years how isra arrived at this specific age remains unknown but we imagine it has something to do with flight experience either way joining the Space Program required pilots from the Indian Air Force to voluntarily apply ISRO Chief s somat says over 15 Pilots applied from which 12 were initially shortlisted the list then shrunk to 10 before the final four were selected but getting
to the final four is a rigorous process this involves interviewing Pilots to gauge their responses mental state how they deal under duress emotional state and so on a detailed medical screening process is used and candidates must also meet strict height and weight requirements to ensure they can reach all controls in the capsule comfortably short-listed candidates then move on to preliminary training this involves being exposed to an environment that simulates the microgravity of space flight usually this is achieved by placing the pilots in an airplane that flies in parabolic paths to achieve weightlessness for short bursts
of time you can find multiple videos of these flights online though our personal favorite is the music video for okay go song Upside Down and inside out it's brilliant and illustrates this phenomenon quite well in addition to weightlessness practice candidates also undergo water survival training and learn how to Space Walk a big part of training to be an astronaut involves emergency procedures and how to survive when things don't go to plan and this entire process can take around 18 months all candidates for the gagan mission are men but that's mainly a consequence of not having
female Pilots that meet the eligibility and experience criteria you see the iaf only began allowing women pilots to fly their fighter jets in 2016 which means they don't have the level of experience the men who have been flying for much longer due and since there is no official restriction on women applying to become astronauts perhaps a future Mission will have them as part of the crew the four candidates for the 2025 ganyan Mission were selected after a final round of preliminary training in Russia they have undergone a further 11 months of training at the Yuri
gagaran Cosmonaut training center in Russia before returning home to India the reason so much of their training has been conducted in Russia is because they have Tech technology and training facilities that India still doesn't possess in addition to this Russia is a veteran when it comes to space flight and has been a geopolitical partner to India for quite a while currently the four Indian astronauts are continuing training at a new astronaut facility in bangaluru in India prior to this phase they were receiving more of a generic astronaut space flight training but from here on the
training is designed specifically for the gagan mission this phase involves a lot of spacecraft specific training and since the vehicle is being designed and built in India it makes sense to conduct it there in addition to this the four astronauts are also pursuing a masters in technology at the Indian Institute of Technology in mangaloo India's journey into space exploration commenced in an organized fashion when the Indian National Committee for space research was set up all the way back in 1962 in 1969 it was rebranded as the Indian space research organization with a formal space research
program to follow in the early '70s by 1975 is had built India's first satellite arabat which was launched by the Soviet space agency intercosmos by 1980 ISRO had developed a small launch vehicle which successfully carried the rs1 satellite into orbit making India the seventh country to be capable of undertaking orbital launches all this to say that Israel has been steadily developing proprietary space technology even though it hasn't enjoyed the visibility that NASA has the space agency most recently jumped into the spotlight with the chandrian mission in August 2023 as it successfully landed on the moon
in the lunar South Pole making it Humanity's first soft Landing in the region what made even bigger waves was that it managed to pull it off with a budget of only $75 million in Space Agency terms this is exceptionally Frugal for comparison Russia's Luna 25 mission to get to the the moon cost $200 million and was still unsuccessful oh and fun fact while we're discussing budgets Christopher Nolan's movie Interstellar cost $165 million to produce that's more than two moon missions for India which begs the question is Interstellar more complicated to understand or a moon mission
earlier in 2014 India became the first country to successfully insert a spacecraft into Mars orbit on the first try again with astoundingly Frugal Mission cost of just $74 million the maven Mission by NASA to get to Mars cost $582 Million by comparison so ISRO Can Be Frugal enough to leave the competition in the dust at least that's what it seems experts say it has something to do with how fundamentally different the approach to missions are at ISRO and it is also partly some clever marketing while shrien 3 only cost $75 million ISRO doesn't discl whether
that cost includes the research and development of the Gendron 1 and 2 missions which were the foundation on which the final mission was based unlike NASA's Maven Mission the ISRO Mission to Mars aboard the mongan satellite will not touch down on the surface and thus doesn't need the hardware NASA does to be successful in essence Mission parameters and objectives can have a big say in how expensive a project can get and not all missions to the same location or Planet are equal this is not to take take away from the fact that ISRO is indeed
very good at reducing Mission costs the space agency relies on using smaller modules thus requiring smaller and lighter spacecraft to carry them they use less Fuel and are cheaper to build and by keeping the mission parameter small it reduces the complexity and thus cost of the overall project another contributor to cost savings is isro's commitment to using domestic technology well the gagan coupled with the chandrian moon missions and the Adia L1 Sun observation projects are just a testament to how serious India is about space exploration at a meeting with ISRO in October 2023 Prime Minister
Modi directed The organization's top brass to work towards setting up an Indian space station in orbit by 2035 and sending the first Indian to the Moon by 2040 ISRO is already developing a road map for further exploration of the Moon through future shran missions and the development of a Next Generation launch vehicle in addition to this the space agency is currently constructing a new launch facility in the city of tutuki ISRO Chief s somat says it should be ready in around 2 years and will support emerging private satellite launches he expects at least 24 launches
from this location every year the facility will be compatible with isro's own sslv rocket as well as Rockets designed by private companies and while India is steadily developing their domestic expertise they haven't stopped exploring other opportunities NASA has announced a collaboration with isra to train a pair of Indian astronauts For an upcoming mission to the International Space Station this training is set to take place sometime in 20124 one of these candidates will then proceed to the ISS for a week-long mission which will make them the very first Indian citizen to visit the facility ISRO Chief
es somat had earlier mentioned the two candidates for the ISS mission trading at Nasa would be from the force selected for the gagan mission but that now seems highly unlikely with the current time frames we expect ISRO to provide an update at some point in the near future either with a different set of candidates or pushing the NASA training to a much later date either way the world's largest democracy has its eyes on the stars and seems well equipped to get there welcome to the Space Race India
