BENGALURU: Even as India and the US spar over the former’s defence contracts with Russia, the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) has finally signed the agreement to get its astronauts for the proposed Gaganyaan mission trained in Russia, even as other countries including the US and France were being considered initially.Isro chairman K Sivan told TOI in March that the agency was most likely to pick Russia given that the two agencies have had previous experience—Russian took India’s Rakesh Sharma to space—and the Institute of Aerospace Medicine (IAM) under the Indian Air Force (IAF) has also worked with Russia.Rakesh Sharma, who is also a member of the National Advisory Council (NAC) advising Isro on the Gaganyaan mission, told TOI: “I think it’s logical to go with Russia as it has been tried and tested. We’ve used the facility before and therefore it makes eminent sense. Although I am unaware of the state of readiness of the other training establishments. And, given the tight timelines that we have this appears most logical.”On Monday, Natalia Lokteva, first deputy director general, Glavkosmos—a subsidiary of Roscosmos State Corporation (Russia’s space agency)—and S Unnikrishnan Nair, director, Human Space Flight Centre (HSFC) of Isro, signed a contract for “selection support, medical examination and space training of Indian astronauts.”An official statement issued by Glavkosmos confirming the contract, read: “Glavkosmos will render to HSFC services on consulting support of selection of candidates for the Indian astronauts, providing medical examination of the candidates for access to space flight related training program and providing space flight related training for the Indian astronauts selected on the basis of the medical examination,” said in a statement released Monday.The work will be provided with the support of the Federal State Budget Organization, UA Gagarin Research & Test Cosmonaut Training Center, and the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences.“As part of the documents we had given IAF we had described the kind of requirement and involvement of foreign agencies for training and so on… The training will be at three levels. After the rigorous selection progress, two levels of training will be done at IAM and the third level will be done abroad. Simulation of the real space environment, parabolic flights and training in the spacecraft et al will be done abroad,” Sivan had earlier told TOI.Russia also trains astronauts from across the world seeking to go the near earth orbits. “As you well know that presently the only access to space to near earth orbit is provided by the Russians. And therefore no matter which crew goes up into orbit, the final training is done in Russia as they have to equip themselves with the systems of the Russian spacecraft,” Sharma said.Isro established the HSFC to develop life support systems, crew training and planning for future missions under Gaganyaan.During his visit in September 2018, Jean-Yves Le Gall, president, French space agency—Centro Nacional de Estudios Espaciales (CNES)— announced a working group for Gaganyaan and told said that there are a lot of areas of human spaceflight that France has expertise in which it would like to offer. “We even have expertise in astronauts’ training,” Gall had told TOI, adding that the agency was keen on partnering with Isro.