GAGANYAAN
MISSION CREW – SCI & TECH
News:
India announces
four-member crew for 'Gaganyaan' space mission
What's
in the news?
●
Recently, the Prime Minister announced the
names of the four astronauts who will fly to low-Earth orbit as part of the
Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Gaganyaan Mission.
Crew
of Gaganyaan Mission:
The four astronauts are
as follows.
●
Group Captain Prashanth Balakrishnan Nair
●
Group Captain Ajit Krishnan
●
Group Captain Angad Pratap
●
Wing Commander Subhanshu Shukla
They have been selected
to be the astronauts on India’s first crewed mission to space.
Trained
Crew:
●
ISRO
and Glavkosmos (a subsidiary of Russian space agency
Roscosmos) signed a memorandum of understanding for the training of four
astronauts in June 2019.
●
The four astronauts trained at Russia’s
Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in February 2020 till March 2021.
Gaganyaan
Mission:
●
Gaganyaan mission is a space mission to demonstrate ISRO’s human spaceflight
capability by launching a human crew to an orbit of 400 km and bringing them safely back to earth.
Cost:
●
The total cost of the Gaganyaan Programme
is approximately Rs 9023 crore.
Launch
Vehicle:
●
GSLV
Mk III, also known as
LVM-3, will be used as a launch vehicle in Gaganyaan mission.
●
After reconfiguring to meet human safety
demand, it has been renamed as Human Rated LVM-3.
Astronaut
Training:
●
The astronauts short-listed for Gaganyaan
mission will be trained in Russia.
●
They will be familiarized with flying in
weightless condition during the course of training.
Aim:
●
The mission aims to demonstrate India’s
capability to launch human beings to low earth orbit and safely return them to
Earth.