Earlier on 1 January, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) selected four astronauts for its mission ‘Gaganyaan’, which will soon begin their training in Russia.

While stating that a lot of progress has been made in the Gaganyaan mission, the ISRO chief said, “There will be several tests that we'll do this year. Also, the final four astronaut-elects have been selected and they'll begin training in Russia from third week of January.”

Sivan further informed that the ISRO is aiming for the first unmanned flight of Gaganyaan this year. He also allayed fears that the ISRO’s ambitious projects will hamper other missions and said that the space agency plans to execute more than 25 missions this year.

According to reports, India had picked 12 test pilots, who cleared level-1 screening, in the first week of September for the human spaceflight programme that envisages to send Indian astronauts to space by 2022.

The 12 candidates were selected by the Institute of Aerospace Medicine (IAM) from the 60 applicants after the first round of screening. Of these, final four were selected by the Glavkosmos - a subsidiary of Roscosmos State Corporation (Russia’s space agency), after other rounds of screening.

The Glavkosmos and ISRO’s Human Space Flight Centre (HSFC) in July had finalised an agreement that will see the Russian agency provide advanced training to Gaganyaan astronauts.

“Since training will happen both in India and Russia, Glavkosmos also screened the astronauts,” a source was quoted in the report as saying.