Astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla on Tuesday said engineers at ISRO were comparing his experiences onboard the Axiom-4 mission to the International Space Station with the planning for Gaganyaan, India’s maiden human spaceflight.
Shukla, who became the first Indian astronaut to travel to the International Space Station (ISS), said the formal training for the Gaganyaan mission would begin soon.
Four Indian astronauts have been selected and trained for the Gaganyaan mission which is expected to take place in 2027, when the home-build LVM-3 will place at least two of them in a low earth orbit.
Shukla, the IAF pilot-turned-astronaut, said the engineers at ISRO were identifying the dissimilarities between the Gaganyaan mission and other human spaceflight to identify the gaps, if any.
"These missions are so complex that you want to be really sure when you send something up. That is the activity that is happening very intensely. All the systems are being discussed, revised. The philosophy is being checked. That kind of de-brief is happening," he told reporters on the sidelines of India International Space Conclave organised by the Indian Space Association (ISpA) here.
Shukla said the Gaganyaan mission was an ongoing programme, and training and development are taking place simultaneously, He said there will be a formal training process for the Gaganyaan mission, but it will not be as expanded as other missions.
"When I got into training for Axiom-4, I did my training up till the mission. It will not be that compact for the first Gaganyaan mission," he said.
The astronaut said that he was sharing with ISRO engineers his experiences about the Axiom-4 mission and the systems and information gained from his 18-day stay at the orbital laboratory.
"The change that has occurred is that after my training and my mission, the experience we gained has been used to create a template," he said.
Shukla said the umbrella benefit of the Axiom-4 mission was that Indian engineers were comparing everything they were doing with the experience gathered during his stay at the orbital lab.
"The problem of space missions is that there is no one right answer. You can do it in 10 different ways. What I can do is verify the robustness of what we are doing. That activity is happening," he said.
"I don't think there is any direct change that is happening in anything we are doing in G-1 (the first uncrewed mission under the Gaganyaan programme). Yes, the analysis is happening and if we feel there is a need, the changes will be incorporated," Shukla said.
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