Both of the astronauts, called Gaganyatris by ISRO, had completed ISRO’s own training program for spaceflight that included time at the Star City training center in Russia.
Neat, so we’ve got:
- USA: Astronaut
- Russia: Cosmonaut
- China: Taikonaut
- India: Gaganyatris
Any other countries with special names for space-people?
Brexiteers?
Someone needs to message Tim Peake and get his opinion on what he should be called.
Hopefully we can get the current ISS astronauts out of the way before they launch
The docking port schedule will be fun if they can’t get rid of Starliner soon.
- Crew 9 - NET Aug 18th '24
- Cargo Dragon - Sept '24
- Ax-4 - NET Nov '24
- Cargo Dragon - Dec '24
ISRO said that Shukla had been assigned to the Axiom Space Ax-4 mission to the station, while Nair will train as his backup.
Ax-4 - NET Nov '24
Wow, I didn’t expect ISRO astronauts to be flying as early as November. That’s awesome!
Do you think we’ll see Gaganyaan dock to the ISS before the ISS is retired? It would be cool if the US does seat swaps like they do with Soyuz.
They’re planning to send a cargo Gaganyaan to the ISS, but haven’t said anything about a crewed one.
This post has a nice graphic of the roadmap:
https://twitter.com/VikranthJonna/status/1810984396490752268
Thanks for the link! Pretty ambitious timeline if it holds.
There’s nothing about crewed missions to ISRO’s own station, but it seems natural that that would be next. And if they do cargo to the ISS and crew to their own station, why not crew to the ISS?
Unfortunately, I’m sure these timelines will slip. If H3 follows G5, that puts it into 2030+, and it’ll start to compete with Long Dragon for an ISS spot.
Honestly I think it’s a testament to our civilization’s level of space achievement that a 7-day mission turned into a 60-day mission and it’s not that big a deal.
It’s just cool that we have the infrastructure to support an unexpected 10x mission duration.
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