New Delhi: By the time Gaganyaan finally lifts off in 2027, India’s very first team of astronauts will be middle-aged trailblazers. The oldest Indian astronaut-designate Group Captain Prasanth Nair will be over 50 if the country’s first human spaceflight sticks to its deadline. The remaining three ‘Gaganyatris’ will also be well over 40 surpassing the average age of NASA astronauts—34 years—when they first go to space.
With delays marring India’s crewed mission to space, first due to COVID-19 and now due to technical preparations, India’s astronauts-in-training are stuck in limbo.
For the Gaganyaan astronauts-in-waiting, time is dilating but age is not.
Indian Air Force test pilots Prasanth B. Nair, Ajit Krishnan, Angad Pratap Singh and Shubhanshu Shukla have been training in various modules in Russia and the US for over six years since they were selected for the programme in 2019. Now, they are a fit, focused and formidable team—with nowhere to go just yet.
But ISRO, the primary agency leading the Indian human spaceflight mission, does not consider it a problem.
“Ageing? These boys (the Gaganyaan astronaut designates) can leave any 20-year-old behind in fitness,” a top official from the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) Human Space Flight Centre said.
On 26 August, Nair celebrated his 49th birthday, and will be over 50 by the time the mission takes off. Krishnan and Singh are both currently 43, and Shukla—who recently returned from his mission to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the US’s Axiom-4 Mission—will turn 40 this year.
ISRO officials said that the only criterion for the mission is the fitness of the astronaut-designates.
“There are many astronauts who have flown to space even in their 70s. The focus is on fitness, and all of our Gaganyatris are soldiers, officers in the IAF, who are at the peak of their fitness,” the top official from ISRO’s Human Space Flight Centre said.
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What has kept them busy?
Nair, Krishnan, Singh and Shukla are not wasting precious time. All four have also enrolled in a Master’s programme at Bengaluru’s Indian Institute of Science (IISc), where they are immersing themselves in various aspects of the space programme.
Shukla became the first Indian to fly to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the US’s Axiom-4 Mission; Nair was his backup crew. Both spent the last year training with space giants like NASA, SpaceX, Axiom Space, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the ESA.
“No amount of training feels enough when it comes to representing your country in space, but what I realised is that there is always more than one way of doing something and the more knowledge you gain, the better you become,” Nair told ThePrint on the sidelines of a media interaction in Delhi.
In July, Singh led a 10-day analogue mission at Bengaluru’s Institute of Aerospace Medicine. The mission simulated conditions that astronauts might experience during deep space missions.
Meanwhile, Krishnan continues to add to his flying hours at his IAF base in Kharagpur, whenever he finds time between ISRO commitments.
Delays kept ‘Gaganyatris’ waiting
In 2019, the Indian Space agency started recruiting potential candidates who would fly on India’s first human spaceflight. After a rigorous selection process, 10 IAF test pilots made the cut, after which India’s final four were selected.
According to ISRO officials, there were no outright age cutoff laid out, but it was “preferable” for the candidates to be under 40.
“The focus was that the candidates fulfil other mandatory requirements,” a senior ISRO official said, adding that since the Gaganyaan crewed mission was India’s first attempt at sending humans to space, the selection pool was already limited to just test pilots.
“Test pilots already undergo at least 60% of the training requirements for astronauts. This makes them the most preferred for human spaceflights,” the official said.
ISRO had initially set the target for the mission to take flight by 2022, but the COVID-19 pandemic put a halt to their training.
Once things went back to normal, the four astronaut designates resumed and eventually completed their training in Russia, but now the progress in the mission has been slow from ISRO’s end.
The mission has already been pushed from 2024 to the end of 2025, and now to the first half of 2027. The catch, however, is that according to the current plan, only two of the four selected astronauts will finally fly in the mission. This means that for two, the wait would be even longer. But according to experts, a “delay is better than risking the lives of the astronauts”.
“When you are sending humans to space, there is no scope for error. It is essential that we get everything right because we are not just sending astronauts to space, but are also responsible for bringing them back safely,” said former ISRO chief S. Somanath.
Global average age for active astronauts
Peggy Whitson, former NASA astronaut who is now a chief astronaut with the US space company, Axiom Space, is 65. She recently led a team of four first-time astronauts—all in their thirties—including Shukla, to the ISS. And she doesn’t plan on stopping any time soon.
According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), while there is no age restriction for the selection of astronauts under their human spaceflight programme, the age of candidates selected in the past has ranged between 26 and 46 years, with 34 being the average age.
An analysis of NASA’s selection of astronauts by National Geographic in 2020 showed that 9.5% of the astronauts were in the age group of 25-30 at the time of their selection, while 50.2% were between the ages of 30 and 35. Over 32% NASA astronauts were in the 35 to 40-year age group, and 7.5% fell in the 40 to 50-year age category. Only 0.1% astronauts were above 45 at the time of selection.
In 1959, when NASA selected its first batch of astronauts—Group 1 or the ‘Mercury Seven’—the space agency also went on to establish the qualifications of astronauts for the future. Candidates had to be below 40 years of age, less than 5 feet 11 inches tall, be in “excellent physical condition”, have a bachelor’s degree or equivalent, be a graduate of the test pilot school, and have 1,500 hours of jet flying time.
When Walter M. Schirra, Alan B. Shepard, Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Donald K. “Deke” Slayton, John H. Glenn, M. Scott Carpenter, and L. Gordon Cooper were selected for the NASA ‘Mercury Seven’ programme, all of them were in their mid-thirties.
Glenn, in fact, went on to fly on a space shuttle mission at the age of 77, becoming the oldest person to travel to space in 1998.
The US space agency has become more accommodating with the age of astronauts as its human space programme has advanced over the years. But the European Space Agency (ESA), the Russian Roscosmos and the Chinese Space Agency have stricter age limits for their astronaut candidates.
“The role of an astronaut is physically and mentally demanding. To ensure each recruited astronaut can fulfil at least two missions during their employment with ESA prior to retirement, ESA is obliged to set a maximum age limit of 50 years,” ESA’s eligibility criteria reads, adding, “This means that applications from anybody older than 50 at the time of applying cannot be taken further in the selection process.”
Russia has set an age limit of 35 for its cosmonaut application, and in China, candidates must be between 25 and 30 years of age during their initial training.
‘Age is just a number’
India’s “fantastic four” have become the face of its space ambitions. On National Space Day on August 23, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the government’s plan to expand India’s human spaceflight programme by creating an astronaut pool and inducting candidates from all walks and genders.
“We have invested a lot of money and resources in the training of these astronauts. Of course, they will be flying to space. Anywhere in the world, the average wait period between training and the first mission of astronauts is around 5-6 years,” the Human Space Flight Centre official said.
“Sometime around last year, a 90-year-old artist travelled to space. He was an astronaut candidate for NASA in the 1960s and finally got a chance to make the trip now,” he added.
“Age is truly just a number.”
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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