In an attempt to adhere to these deadlines while saving precious time and money, ISRO is choosing to outsource some technological development to other Indian research institutions, but certain aspects of a crewed flight require international help. India may be manufacturing the staples like space food and components for launch vehicles, but the necessity of astronaut training is leading to partnerships with Russia and France.

International collaboration on a national mission

Despite ISRO’s goals of developing a fully indigenous human spaceflight program, the organization doesn’t have a lot of know-how about what it takes to be an astronaut. It’s one thing to make a machine that will work in orbit, but it’s something entirely different to keep a human alive and healthy in an environment as unforgiving as space.

“The challenges in engineering technologies will be relatively easier to deal with than human science challenges like space medicine, exposure to the space environment, and rehabilitation and adaptation to normal life [back on Earth],” explains Mankad.

ISRO’s inexperience with astronaut training has opened up opportunities for an international collaboration with Glavcosmos, a subsidiary and launch service provider of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos. And in January 2020, four IAF pilots-turned-astronauts were flown to the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center near Moscow to begin a 12-month training program. It will include intensive physical and biomedical training, study of the Soyuz systems, and preparation for unusual flight conditions. Additionally, ISRO is teaming up with France to train IAF doctor to monitor the health of astronauts before, during, and after their flights.

The road ahead

If the mission is successful, India will join the ranks of China, the U.S. and Russia in launching their own crews into space. Gaganyaan’s astronauts — the first batch of ISRO’s human spaceflight program — will conduct scientific experiments in microgravity that cover a spectrum of research topics, ranging from space medicine to communication technology. And as we’ve seen from other national space agencies in the past, after ISRO completes a number of crewed flights and experiments, an Indian space station might be in the offing.

While similar to the International Space Station (ISS) in structure and objectives, the theorized Indian space station will weigh only 20 tons and serve as a temporary home for astronauts to perform experiments. While ISRO has set the year 2030 as its target to launch a space station, the agency has not yet outlined how it will be built or what it might look like. The history of building functional, habitable space stations points toward at least a decade of careful planning before execution. Despite longer preparation timeframes, the first attempts by the Soviet Union and the U.S. ranged from imperfect launches to unfortunate deaths.

The ISS’s foundations date to 1984, and its first module wasn’t launched until 14 years later. The ISS reflects the efforts of five countries that took nearly a decade and 35 shuttle missions to assemble. Currently, ISRO’s plans to launch its own space station seem ambitious, if not impossible. But the first step toward achieving this, Mankad says, is for ISRO to redirect its focus toward developing reusable lower stages for its rockets. This could help minimize the astronomical costs that come with spaceflight.

“It is time ISRO thinks big and takes up more challenging tasks. Time to do this is now,” he explains, adding that Indian research institutes will play a major role in shaping the future of ISRO's space program.

Additionally, ISRO missions to study the Sun, Moon, and Mars are lined up in the next five years, highlighting the agency’s gradual shift from focusing on communication satellites to becoming a major player in exploring the solar system. With a targeted launch in late 2020, Chandrayaan-3 will be ISRO’s second attempt to land a spacecraft on the lunar south pole. Also planned for launch this year is Aditya-L1, ISRO’s first mission to study the Sun. A longer, ongoing project is Mars Orbiter Mission 2, a successor to the 2014 mission that brought ISRO to the limelight because of its cost-effective and successful method of putting a spacecraft into martian orbit on its first attempt.

With launch dates planned for the next few years, these missions come at a patriotic time in Indian history: the country’s 75th year of independence. The cultural significance attached to the Gaganyaan mission means the launches will undoubtedly be viewed by many, including the crowd at ISRO’s first visitor’s gallery. In an attempt to pique people’s interest in space, the gallery — which is almost always overridden even though it can accommodate some 5,000 visitors — is one of many outreach efforts recently taken up by ISRO since the inception of its human spaceflight program.

Through these missions and activities, ISRO is not only accomplishing a series of firsts and making great strides to returning Indian astronauts to space, but it’s also gradually carving out a reputation as a major player in spaceflight — one mission at a time.