The hunt for India’s first astronauts — ‘vyomanauts’ in a desi tweak — has begun. Two of the four selected vyomanauts (vyoma means ‘space’ or ‘sky’ in Sanskrit) will finally go on India’s first manned space mission scheduled to lift off in 2015.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) is laying down criteria for short-listing 200 Indian Air Force (IAF) fighter pilots, from whom four will be selected for the space mission, director-general of medical services, IAF, Air Marshal P Madhusoodanan told DNA.
While two vyomanauts will finally go on the space mission, the other two will remain in reserve.
The reason for choosing vyomanauts from the pool of IAF fighter pilots is that they are already trained to endure high gravity forces. This makes it easier to train them for space missions. “The module (for the selection) is being prepared at the moment,” he said. The run-up to the selection process speeded up after February 2009, when the Union government gave its nod to the Rs12,400-crore manned space flight mission.
India’s first human space mission envisages a fully autonomous orbital vehicle carrying two vyomanauts into space at an altitude of 300-400 km from sea-level, and safely returning them to Earth. The mission is expected to last between four and seven days.
“The selection procedure will begin soon. But the final phase (when the four finalists will be selected) will be in 2012 as the selection criteria are very strict,” Madhusoodanan said.
The candidate vyomanauts will have to answer a Nasa questionnaire before being subjected to physical examination, which would include cardiac, dental, neurological, ophthalmologic, psychological, radiographic, ear-nose-throat (ENT), and other laboratory tests at the Institute of Aerospace Medicine (IAM) in Bangalore.
The candidates will be tested on the human centrifuge machine at the IAM for endurance while experiencing extreme gravitational forces – of the kind one experiences during space flights.
Madhusoodanan said the facilities at the IAM were being upgraded in preparation for the tough selection process for vyomanauts.
The final four candidates will undergo astronaut training at the IAM as well as at ISRO’s astronaut training school. This will be set up on a 100-acre land in North Bangalore by 2012.
The vyomanauts will be trained to survive in the space vehicle environment while enduring micro gravity, pressure and gaseous changes, to keep alert under space flight stresses, to monitor and operate controls and instruments in the case of information failure, to scientifically observe and report beyond what instruments can do, and to control and improve flight systems and sub-systems like a true test pilot.
India has already completed a space capsule recovery experiment (SCRE) in January, 2007, to perfect the art of retrieving the vyomanauts safely after they return from their space mission.
The spacecraft carrying the vyomanauts will be programmed to splash at a predetermined location in the sea before Indian Navy vessels retrieve the vyomanauts for post-mission medical checks.
