BENGALURU: India’s
astronauts training facility — which has been on the drawing board for 10 years — is set to come up on Isro’s land, about 10km from the
Kempegowda International Airport, near here.
The facility, likely to be called Astronaut Training and Biomedical Engineering Centre, will be developed on a 50-acre land owned by the Indian Space Research Organisation around its guesthouse in Devanahalli, about 40km from Bengaluru. The centre is expected to mimic the Russian facility where
astronauts from around the world are trained.
The plan conceived in 2008-09 was awaiting approval for the human spaceflight programme. The centre will be built in collaboration with the Indian Air Force’s Institute of Aviation Medicine.
(Picture used for representational purpose)
(Picture used for representational purpose)
The astronauts selected for India’s first human space mission in 2022 will train in Russia or the US since the Bengaluru centre may not be fully ready in four years. Isro chairman Sivan K confirmed to TOI the Bengaluru centre is for future missions.
The proposed facility, which will be built in collaboration with the IAF’s Institute of Aviation Medicine (IAM), will prepare personnel for manned missions in recovery-and-rescue operations, study of radiation environment and long journeys across space through water simulation. It will be equipped to train astronauts on surviving in zero-gravity environment. For now, the IAM’s first task is to pick astronauts for the 2022 human space mission. The institute has developed several tests, and a centrifugal system that’s used to train pilots to handle gravitational force.
“We’ve the simulators which are required to select astronauts. We started the process in 2009 and developed the systems by 2011-12. Two simulators are ready for use, and a few more need minimal enhancements that could be done in 2-3 weeks once we get the goahead,” the official said.
(Picture used for representational purpose)
