India’s first manned space flight — Gaganyaan — will send three humans into space for five to seven days and the spacecraft will be placed in a low earth orbit of 300-400 k m from the earth’s surface. As part of his Independence Day speech earlier this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had vowed to put an Indian in space by 2022.While Modi had said that India’s first human space flight to be launched before its 75th Independence Day could be led by a man or even a woman, Minister of State, Space and Atomic Energy, Dr Jitender Singh said the process of finalising those who will be part of the mission is still underway. “There are several factors to be taken into consideration –– expertise, physical and biological conditions being a few,” he said at a press conference on Tuesday.While revealing the details of India’s first homegrown human spaceflight, ISRO chairman K Sivan said the organisation would put out an advertisement to invite applications for the expedition.“Though in my opinion even a common man can apply, we would prefer trained pilots for the first expedition,” Sivan said, adding that astronauts would be trained by ISRO and the Indian Air Force. Given that the mission is for a tight schedule of 40 months, Sivan said the mission’s crew will be trained in India and abroad, the details of which are being worked out.He added that the prototypes for the space suit and the environment support system are already ready. “ISRO has a full handle on engineering and developing the module. The challenge for the next 40 months is to work on the human viability of the models,” Sivan said.The crew is expected to be in space for up to seven days and is expected to conduct experiments on micro-gravity. He said ISRO will be partnering with industry and the academia to define further targets for the mission.Calling the mission a ‘turning point’ in India’s space journey, Singh said it is the most cost-effective venture of its kind, even by Indian standards. Pegged to cost nearly Rs 10,000 crore, the project is expected to provide employment to at least 13,000 people in the industry.While ISRO had been planning the Mission since 2004, Singh had said in Parliament in 2016 that a human space flight mission was “not a priority” for the government. “We were waiting for the Prime Minister to make an announcement at the right time,” he said.