Far from delaying the Gagnyaan mission, the Indo-US Axiom-4 mission will actually help ISRO carry out the landmark flight and augment its capabilities, the space agency’s Chairman, Dr S Somanath, has told NDTV.

In an exclusive conversation on Tuesday, the ISRO chief also spoke about how Indian astronaut Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla going to the International Space Station (ISS) in the middle or end of next year as part of the Axiom-4 mission will boost India’s understanding of human spaceflight.

Under the Gaganyaan mission, India plans to send humans to an orbit of 400 km above Earth’s surface for at least one day and bring them back

“Both have no connection in terms of the progress of the work. The progress on Gaganyaan is very good. Of course, there have been some delays… that is not connected with the mission to ISS, it is only in terms of qualification of certain systems that we have yet to complete. I believe that the ISS mission will only add value to what we are doing in Gaganyaan because we are only in the process of development of the first crew module and service module,” Dr Somanath emphasised.

“It is also about the protocols associated with sending humans to space, with which we have no experience. So we bank on the training of these people (French, Russian and American experts). India’s Gaganyatris have already undergone training under the Russian model and when they train in the US, it will add value to the process we have conceived. There are many things we need to plan and do – their preparation, training, health monitoring and even the features of the crew module. So there won’t be a delay, there will be value addition, it will be an augmenting factor,” he added.

India has picked four candidates for the Gaganyaan mission. Of these, Group Captain Shukla is India’s main astronaut for the Axiom-4 mission and Group Captain Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair will be the backup astronaut. Incidentally, the Axiom-4 mission is already gathering an Indian, likeable moniker – ‘Mission Akash Ganga’.  

“PM Narendra Modi has announced the continuation of Gaganyaan along with the building of a space station and going to the Moon. That means we need to have a pool of astronauts of Gaganyatris to continue this process. They need to develop the knowledge, the skill, become the trainer of trainers, and also help us build the architecture or systems based on their experience. Currently, we are banking on the only astronaut we had, Rakesh Sharma, and them,” the ISRO chief said. 

‘At The Right Time’

To a question on whether it would be right to say that India has been late in getting to human spaceflight but is leapfrogging, Dr Somanath stressed that the country is not late but is doing things at an appropriate time.

“When the nation reached a certain threshold of technology or capability, then we decided to go into this. It’s not something we need to do urgently. Human spaceflight is a crucial capability that we have to develop at some point in time in the history of our space programme and the time has now come for it to be done. We are not delayed in my opinion, this is the right time… We are working with other nations on this, because this is connected to humanity, it is not about technological prowess alone,” he said.

(From left) India’s astronaut-designates Shubhanshu Shukla, Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair, Ajit Krishnan, and Angad Pratap. File photo.
| Photo Credit: PTI

The story so far: On August 2, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) announced that two of the astronauts selected for its maiden human spaceflight mission, ‘Gaganyaan’, will travel to the U.S. in the first week of August to train there for a mission to the International Space Station. In particular, Wing Commander Shubhanshu Shukla has been assigned to fly to the ISS while Group Captain Prashanth Nair will be his back-up.

What is this new mission?

On June 22, 2023, the U.S. and India issued a joint statement after Prime Minister Narendra Modi met President Joe Biden. Among other things, the statement mentioned “a joint effort to the International Space Station in 2024”. The two astronauts — or “Gaganyatris”, as ISRO is calling them — are the Indian participants for this mission.

ISRO published a statement on August 2 in which it said: “During the mission, the Gaganyatri will undertake selected scientific research and technology demonstration experiments on board the ISS as well as engage in space outreach activities. The experiences gained during this mission will be beneficial for [Gaganyaan] and it will also strengthen human space flight cooperation between ISRO and NASA.”

Who is part of India’s crew?

On February 27, during a visit to the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram, Prime Minister Modi announced the names of the four astronaut-candidates for Gaganyaan mission — the ambitious ISRO mission to fly Indian astronauts to space onboard an Indian launch vehicle.

The other two, apart from Mr. Shukla and Mr. Nair, were Group Captains Ajit Krishnan and Angad Pratap. All four are test pilots with the Indian Air Force.

They have undergone training in India and Russia; according to the India-U.S. joint statement, NASA will provide Mr. Shukla and Mr. Nair “advanced training … at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas”.

According to ISRO, a “National Mission Assignment Board” selected Mr. Shukla and Mr. Nair for the joint mission. Their flight to the ISS will next need to be approved by the Multilateral Crew Operations Panel, which has representatives from the ISS’s five international partners: NASA, Russia’s Roscosmos, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency.

What are the mission parameters?

Per ISRO’s statement, its Human Spaceflight Centre has signed an agreement with Axiom Space, Inc. “for its upcoming Axiom-4 mission to the ISS”. The mission, colloquially called Ax-4, is the fourth crewed mission to the ISS organised by Axiom Space, a private company based in Houston.

Axiom plans to operate the world’s first commercial space station. Its current offerings include human spaceflight services, as part of which it selects and trains astronaut-candidates, charters launch vehicles, and plans and manages space missions.

As participants of the Ax-4 mission, Mr. Shukla or Mr. Nair will fly to the ISS along with two other astronauts. SpaceX will provide the launch vehicle for the mission and its Crew Dragon capsule will house the crew. NASA has said the mission will last 14 days.

According to the ISS’s programme manager, Ax-4 will fly no sooner than November 2024. At a conference in Las Vegas in late July/early August July 30 to August 1, representatives of Boryung, a South Korean pharmaceutical company that has invested in Axiom Space, said the mission could be postponed to early 2025, Space News reported. This information remains unconfirmed, however.

What is the schedule onboard the ISS?

ISRO chairman S. Somanath said in a recent online interaction that the main purpose of the India-U.S. joint mission to the ISS is to expose the two ‘Gaganyatris’ to the way a spaceflight mission is organised and conducted and to give them flight experience, including working with the crew already onboard the ISS.

In the event that he flies to the ISS, Mr. Shukla has also been designated the prime mission pilot — a responsibility that Mr. Somanath said will put him through the paces of conducting a mission.

The two ‘Gaganyatris’ will also be conducting “five different experiments” onboard the ISS, according to Mr. Somanath, who added that “some of them … originated in India” while “some are international experiments” in which India will be “joint partners”. He declined to share specific details.

What is Gaganyaan’s status?

ISRO has thus far completed the pad abort and the high-altitude abort tests, and has tested the crew escape system, among others.

In October 2023, Mr. Somanath told The Hindu the LVM-3 launch vehicle for the mission has virtually completed the process of being rated to carry humans. He added the crew module was still being developed and that it would have to be manufactured abroad. He also said engineers were working on the capsule’s Environmental Control and Life Support System and the overall Integrated Vehicle Health Management System: “Every day, there is some test happening.”

The next major Gaganyaan milestones are a series of uncrewed suborbital and orbital test flights. The last of these is currently expected to happen in mid-2025, although the date could slip further.