MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd December, 2020) The training of four Indian astronauts in Russia to crew Indian spaceship Gaganyaan into orbit will complete in March of the coming year, Dmitry Loskutov, the head of Glavkosmos, a subsidiary of Russian state space corporation Roscosmos, said on Wednesday.
"Everything is proceeding as scheduled. We expect their training to be completed in March," Loskutov said in a video published by Roscosmos on its YouTube account.
The official said Russian experts might engage in supplementary training of Indian candidate astronauts after that, depending on the dynamics of the coronavirus pandemic.
In June 2019, Glavkosmos and the Indian Space Research Organisation's Human Space Flight Centre signed an agreement under which Indian candidate astronauts would undergo space flight training in Russia. The Gaganyaan crew training began in February 2020, involving four former pilots of fighter jets in the Indian air force.
The Gaganyaan program envisages two unmanned flights before the launch of a crewed mission. So far, the first and only Indian astronaut to reach the orbit was Rakesh Sharma, with the mission launched aboard Soviet spaceship Soyuz T-11 in 1984.
