ISRO looking at pool of ten microgravity experiments for Gaganyaan Mission 2022

The Indian Space Research Organisation is inching closer to the ambitious Gaganyaan mission to send three Indian astronauts to space in 2022. Just about 90 days since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement on the mission, ISRO has begun putting together a list of science experiments to carry out over the 7 days the astronauts will spend in low-Earth orbit. At Rs 10,000 crore, the Gaganyaan mission is India’s biggest space mission so far. The space agency is considering a minimum of 10 microgravity experiments for the mission, including space medicine, sensor development for medical devices, fluid physics, microbiology (air filters and biosensors), monitoring of toxic gases, and more. “While we have indicated 10 areas that we are interested in, we will not restrict experiments to just these areas,” an ISRO official  told The Times of India. [caption id=“attachment_5537561” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”] Representational image. Image courtesy: University of Colorado[/caption] Many researchers might study life science in space, but doing the wet work in a microgravity laboratory in space has its own set of challenges. Equipment required to carry out experiments in space are different from those on land. It needs to be unaffected or immune to the thermal, vacuum and radiation conditions outside the spacecraft and vibrations and acoustic load during the launch and return stages, ISRO said in a statement. “We will obtain specific experiments in these areas from various institutions across India,” the official added. The space agency welcomes applications from any academic institutions in the country that would like to send their microgravity experiment aboard the Gaganyaan mission. The deadline to submit proposals to ISRO is 20 December 2018.