Ahead of the launch of India’s space mission scheduled for next year, the Indian Navy and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have joined hands and come up with a recovery training plan for Gaganyaan at the Water Survival Training Facility (WSTF) at INS Garuda, Kochi.
In a significant step towards realising India’s ambitious Gaganyaan mission to put an Indian in the space with the help of indigenously developed technology, a human spaceflight is scheduled to be launched in the last quarter of 2024. This comes after successfully sending two unmanned flights.
According to ISRO, the Gaganyaan project envisages a demonstration of human spaceflight capability by launching a crew of three members to an orbit of 400 km for a three-day mission and bringing them back safely to earth by landing in Indian sea waters.
The training document was jointly released by Vice-Admiral Atul Anand, Director-General of Naval Operations, S. Unnikrishnan Nair, Director of ISRO’s Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), and Umamaheshwaran R., Director of ISRO’s Human Space Flight Centre (HSFC).
The document outlines the training plan for recovery of the Gaganyaan crew module, defines overall requirements for training of various teams participating in recovery operations, including (navy) divers, MARCOs (maritime commandos), medical specialists, communicators, technicians and naval aviators, according to Navy officials.