India to get its own astronauts' training facility, soon
Five days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced about India's space mission, ISRO has confirmed that an astronauts' training facility will soon come up in Bengaluru. The project that was in pipeline for a decade will be built on ISRO's land in Devanahalli, which is 10kms from the International airport. The facility will most likely have an area of 40-50 acres.
For 2022-mission, no astronaut will get trained in this facility
Tentatively named Astronaut Training and Biomedical Engineering Centre, for building this facility, the Indian Air Force's Institute of Aviation Medicine (IAM) also pitched in. The facility, however, will not be able to train any astronaut for India's first space mission since it'll be in 2022, and that's a tight schedule, confirmed ISRO Chairman Sivan K. They will be trained either in Russia or US.
Training module: How to survive zero-gravity environment, future manned missions
The facility will be built on the lines of the training center in Russia (the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center), said officials. It will train astronauts for surviving in a zero-gravity environment, the most challenging part, as per Rakesh Sharma, India's first astronaut, who flew aboard Soviet spacecraft Salyut 7 in 1984. Training for future manned missions, radiation environment, etc will also be imparted.
For zero gravity situations, water simulators will be there
Apart from this, there will be water simulators. "Astronauts will go underneath the water and learn to live in zero gravity situations," said an official in the know. Other chambers will be there for thermal cycling and radiation regulation. There will also be centrifugals, where astronauts will get trained on acceleration aspects when their module or vehicle is in space.
For conducting selection-tests, the facility has necessary simulators
The first task for IAM is, however, selecting astronauts or Gaganauts (as Modi addressed it to be) for the 2022 mission. For conducting the selection-tests, the facility already has necessary simulators and for training them on Gforce, there is the centrifugal system, said officials. Within a year, selection will be done and then training will be imparted, to prepare the astronauts before the mission.
