Bengaluru: A world-class facility for training astronauts of India will be set up in three years at Challakere, a shrubby, arid oilseeds town on the Bengaluru-Pune NH4 in Chitradurga district of Karnataka, unlike any glitzy metropolis.
A masterplan of Rs 2,700 crore has been proposed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). According to the plan, a top infrastructure will be created that will house its young Human Space Flight Centre (HSFC).
For Gaganyaan mission, India has selected four male pilots as candidates from the Indian Air Force who are scheduled to leave for Moscow in the third week of January. They will be highly trained at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre for 15 months.
ISRO Chief K Sivan said that once the facility is all set up at Challakere, it will be exercised here like Russia. A self-contained facility is what we want to establish and will shift the events and planning of the Human Spaceflight Programme to the new campus at Challakere, said Sivan.
