Gaganyaan test mission to launch in December: Who is Prasanth Nair, astronaut who will join Shubhanshu Shukla?

Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) chief V Narayanan has announced that the agency’s first Gaganyaan test flight is set for launch this December.

The announcement was made during a joint press conference by Union Minister Jitendra Singh, Isro chief Narayanan, and Group Captains Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair and Shubhanshu Shukla .

Notably, Shukla returned to India on August 17 after his journey to the International Space Station as part of Axiom Mission 4.

Gaganyaan , India’s first human spaceflight mission, will see Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair, Ajit Krishnan, Angad Pratap, and Shubhanshu Shukla on board.

But who is Prasanth Nair? What did he say during the briefing?

Find out below:

Who is Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair?

He was born on August 26, 1978, in Kerala’s Palakkad.

He joined the National Defence Academy (NDA) while studying at NSS Engineering College in Palakkad. After completing his training at the academy, he was commissioned into the Indian Air Force in June 1999.

His father, Balakrishnan, is a retired engineer, and his mother, Prameela, is a homemaker. He has two brothers who live abroad, while his sister is based in Thrissur, Kerala, The Indian Express reported.

Nair is a test pilot and flight instructor with the Indian Air Force, having logged around 3,000 flying hours on several aircraft, including the Su-30 MKI, Jaguar, MiG-21, MiG-29, Hawk, Dornier, and An-32.

He earlier served as the Commanding Officer of a Su-30 squadron and later graduated top of his class from the US Air Force Air Command and Staff College in Alabama.

In 2019, he was chosen by Isro for astronaut training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Moscow, where he trained for a year. He then continued preparations at the Human Space Flight Centre in Bengaluru for the upcoming space mission.

Nair married Malayalam actor Lenaa Kumar in a private ceremony in January last year.

On February 27, 2024, Prime Minister Narendra Modi named him one of four astronauts selected for India’s first human spaceflight mission, Gaganyaan.

What did Nair say on the Gaganyaan mission?

At the press conference on Isro’s first Gaganyaan test flight scheduled for December, Nair described himself as Laxman while referring to Shubhanshu Shukla as Ram.

He said, “A few months from now, we are going to have Diwali. That’s the time when Ram ji entered Ayodhya. Over here right now, if I can call myself Laxman. Even though I am elder than ‘Shuks’ (Shubhanshu Shukla), I would love to be Laxman to this Ram any day.”

He went on to add, “Whenever Bharat does something, we make sure everyone benefits. We believe in ‘One is Everyone’. ‘Anandam’ is ‘Sundaram’. Everything is really beautiful. When you see Bharat from above, it’s really beautiful. There’s a reason why this ancient land has been providing guidance to the entire world since a long time.”

“It’s because we believe in the oneness of humanity… I want to add ‘Jai Vaigyanik, Jai Har Bharatiye’ to ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan’.”

What did Shukla say?

Group Captain Shukla said his first-hand experience on the ISS mission was invaluable and far beyond what any training could offer.

He also expressed hope that soon someone would travel to space “from our own capsule, from our rocket, from our soil”.

Speaking about his Axiom-4 mission, Shukla explained that the lessons from the ISS journey would greatly support India’s Gaganyaan programme, and that he had learnt a great deal over the past year while carrying out the mission.

“No matter how much training you have done, even after that, when you sit in the rocket and the engines ignite, when they catch fire, I think it is a very different feeling.

“I had not imagined how it would feel, and I was actually running behind the rocket for the first few seconds, and it took me some time to catch up to it. From that moment until the time we splashed down, the experience was unbelievable. It was so exciting and so amazing that I have really been struggling to find words to convey it to you, so that you can live that experience through my words,” he said.

On the experiments carried out in space, Shukla said the samples had already been sent to institutions, and the principal investigators were studying them.

“The major learning was for the teams to better understand how to design experiments for space missions,” he added.

With inputs from agencies

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