He will check the operation of the life support systems of the Gaganian spacecraft before people can go into orbit
NEW DELHI, February 4th. /tass/. India intends to send a humanoid robot named Vyommitra into orbit in the third quarter of 2024. Minister of State Jitendra Singh, who oversees the nuclear and space industries in the Indian government, told reporters. The robot will check the operation of the life support systems of the Gaganian spacecraft before people can go into orbit.
"The Vyommitra unmanned mission is scheduled for the third quarter of this year," the press service of the Government of India quoted the Minister of State as saying in a distributed press release.
The robot's name is formed from two Sanskrit words - "vyom" ("space", "cosmos") and "mitra" ("friend"). He has the image of a woman, knows several languages and can answer questions, including those concerning the technical condition of the ship.
"The Vyommitra astronaut is designed in such a way as to simulate human functions in the space environment and interact with life support systems," the State minister noted. According to him, the robot can control the parameters of the orbital module, control six panels of the ship, and answer questions from the mission control center. This is the main test before the flight of the first national space crew.
As the head of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Sridhara Panicker Somnath, said earlier on Sunday, it is planned that the republic will send the first spacecraft with a crew into orbit by the end of 2025.
In August 2018, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that "India's son or daughter will go into space with the national Indian flag in his hands by 2022," when the country will celebrate 75 years of liberation from British colonial rule. The name of the project "Gaganian" (from the Sanskrit "gagana" - heaven) means "heavenly ship". However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which stopped work on this project in March 2020, the launch of the Gaganian mission into orbit was postponed.
In the same year 2018, Kailasavadivu Sivan, who held the post of head of ISRO at that time, announced that the organization had no plans to send any animal into orbit for testing. He noted that various global space organizations usually first used animals to test the ship's life support system, but India decided to abandon this practice because it "contradicts the ideology of Hinduism, which condemns harming animals."
Instead, India decided to send a specially created anthropomorphic robot into orbit, on which all the necessary systems will be tested. Only after that, a human crew will be launched.
It was originally planned that there would be a woman in the crew. But so far only four men have been selected as candidates for the first Indian manned space mission. Their names have not yet been announced, it is only known that they are all former Air Force pilots. They were trained in Russia at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Zvezdny Gorodok. Perhaps that is why the Indian space agency decided to give the humanoid robot, which will be the first to go into space, feminine features.