Gaganyaan: Indian Air Force Completes Level-1 Astronaut Selection in Bengaluru

As India is looking forward to a successful Chandrayaan 2 landing on Saturday, September 7, 2019, the country is gearing for a sky mission in the near future.

Under the mission Gaganyaan, India hopes to send humans to space and bring them back in 2022. And for this, the Indian Air Force has successfully completed Level 1 of selection for the Indian Astronauts. The selection took place at the Institute of Aerospace Medicine (IMA) in Bengaluru.

Tweeting about the Level-1 of astronaut selection, IAF posted a number of pictures from the procedure, writing, “#MissionGaganyaan -IAF completed Level-1 of Indian Astronaut selection at Institute of Aerospace Medicine. Selected Test Pilots underwent extensive physical exercise tests, lab investigations, radiological tests, clinical tests & evaluation on various facets of their psychology.”

Gaganyaan will be India’s first manned space mission and a number of selection processes will be done to choose astronauts from India. The mission was initially announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his Independence Day speech in 2018.

With an allocated budget of Rs 10,000 crore, Gaganyaan will send three astronauts for seven days to space. However, before sending the astronauts, ISRO will send two unmanned missions.

As known so far, the GSLV Mk III, the three-stage heavy-lift launch vehicle, will be used to launch Gaganyaan. The activities of the mission will be taken care of by the Human Space Flight Centre in Bengaluru, along with the Institute of Aerospace Medicine.