When Prime Minister Narendra Modi first announced India's human spaceflight mission in his Independence Day address in 2018, he had said a son or daughter of India would fly aboard an Indian space vehicle to commemorate the 75th year of Independence.
In the weeks and months that followed, there was much speculation about the composition of the first crew. However, the Air Force handpicked ten test pilots, all male, for the mission. Earlier this month, four of them were shortlisted for training in Russia, with whom India is partnering for the mission. Isro chairman K. Sivan also announced that only one of them would finally fly for the Gaganyaan mission.
It is clear that despite Modi's push to bring women to the forefront, Gaganyaan will not have a woman as the first Indian spacefarer.
However, Isro on Wednesday unveiled Vyomitra, which it calls in Chetan Bhagat-ish style, a 'half humanoid'. Vyommitra gets her name from two Sanskrit words—vyom which means space and mitra, meaning friend. She will fly onboard the first two “unmanned” flights of the mission. Only the third Gaganyaan flight will have a human crew.
Designed at Isro's Inertial Systems Unit in Thiruvananthapuram, Vyommitra made a sensational debut at the inauguration of an international conference on human spaceflights in Bengaluru. Titled 'Human Spaceflight and Exploration: Present Challenges and Future Trends,' the conference was co-hosted by Isro, International Academy of Astronautics and Astronautical Society of India.
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“Hello everyone, I am Vyommitra, the prototype of the half humanoid made for the first unmanned Gaganyaan mission.'' she told delegates at the symposium. Vyommitra already has an identity card, with validity till December 2023. The symposium has delegates from space agencies from across the world.
Vyommitra is a half humanoid, which means she does not have legs. However, she is interactive enough and will be able to help check the systems in the crew module in situ, including temperature, pressure levels and oxygen availability. She will have some level of autonomy to communicate with the ground station. The model on display is only a prototype of the robot lady who will finally fly out, hopefully by the end of December.
Most missions send mannequins or humanoids in test flights before actually launching a human being into a mission. The most famous of these is Ivan Ivanovich, who flew in the USSR's Vostok spacecraft in 1961 before Yuri Gagarin.
At the conference, Isro also unveiled a model of the crew module, almost the exact dimensions of the actual module that will fly into space.
