Indian Air Force fully geared up for supporting the first Indian human space mission of 2022

[Hindustani78]

BENGALURU, September 14, 2018 21:44 IST
Updated: September 14, 2018 21:44 IST

Indian Air Force and its arms are fully geared up for supporting the first Indian human space mission of 2022, IAF chief Air Chief Marshal B.S. Dhanoa said on Friday.

Coming at a short notice, the Human Space Flight Programme or HSP is daunting and throws a different kind of challenge at the IAF, he said. “We have in-house capabilities at the Institute of Aerospace Medicine [IAM]; we have selected our astronauts in the past. IAM will play a key role in human engineering support and the development of the space crew capsule. It is fully geared up to whatever tasks it must do,” Air Chief Marshal Dhanoa said at the institute’s annual aerospace medicine conference.

Selection of astronauts would take 12-14 months, according to IAM Commandant Air Commodore Anupam Agarwal.

Indian Space Research Organisation, which is tasked with the mission, also called Gaganyaan, has earlier said its three astronauts will most likely be from among the IAF’s test pilots. Air Chief Marshal Dhanoa said ISRO Chairman K.Sivan has discussed the project with him and the astronauts would be selected and trained at IAM and other places once the specific requirements of the flyers are finalised.

“ISRO’s Chairman has met me and I have assured him our full support. It is a tremendous thing for the IAF as well as for the country,” he said.

First Indian astronauts Rakesh Sharma who went in 1984 and fellow test pilot and back-up astronauts Ravish Malhotra were trained at the IAM during 1982-84.

Air Commodore Agarwal said, “We have to choose astronauts trainees not just for today but also for the next ten years. After spending crores of rupees we cannot afford to lose them” for reasons of fitness. Pscychological strengthening would be an important part of their training - to stay calm, caring and alert while they worked in desolate and dangerous space.

He said the challenge of Gaganyaan is bigger as we are the only nation that decided to send man to space first before experiment with animals — which Russia, the U.S., Europe and China did.

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ISRO started launching indigenously made sounding rockets from 1965 and experience gained was of immense value in the mastering of solid propellant technology. In 1975, all sounding rocket activities were consolidated under the Rohini Sounding Rocket (RSR) Programme. RH-75, with a diameter of 75mm was the first truly Indian sounding rocket, which was followed by RH-100 and RH-125 rockets. The sounding rocket programme was the bedrock on which the edifice of launch vehicle technology in ISRO could be built. It is possible to conduct coordinated campaigns by simultaneously launching sounding rockets from different locations. It is also possible to launch several sounding rockets in a single day.

Three versions are offered as operational sounding rockets , which cover a payload range of 8-100 Kg and an apogee range of 80-475 km.

Vehicle
RH-200
RH-300-Mk-II
RH-560-MK-II

Payload (in kg)
10
60
100

Altitude (in km)
80
160
470

Purpose
Meterology
Aeronomy
Aeronomy

Launch Pad
Thumba Balasore
SDSC-SHAR
SDSC-SHAR



Satellite Launch Vehicle-3 (SLV-3) was India's first experimental satellite launch vehicle, which was an all solid, four stage vehicle weighing 17 tonnes with a height of 22m and capable of placing 40 kg class payloads in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).

SLV-3 was successfully launched on July 18, 1980 from Sriharikota Range (SHAR), when Rohini satellite, RS-1, was placed in orbit, The first experimental flight of SLV-3, in August 1979, was only partially successful. Apart from the July 1980 launch, there were two more launches held in May 1981 and April 1983, orbiting Rohini satellites carrying remote sensing sensors.

The successful culmination of the SLV-3 project showed the way to advanced launch vehicle projects such as the Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle (ASLV), Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and the Geosynchronous satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV).

 

[Hindustani78]

Expects the move to improve health, efficiency of Force.

Indian Air Force expects to have its doctors learning to fly military planes in order to understand first-hand the health problems their pilot patients face during and after sorties.

Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshal B.S.Dhanoa said having flying doctors would improve aviators' efficiency as they face new challenges and new aircraft today. He has moved the proposal for the Defence Ministry's approval in what would be a return to a 40-year-old practice.

He said, "It will be the best thing to happen to us. It is also good for doctors to fly because it is very difficult for pilots to become doctors and it takes them five long years."

He said he has signed the proposal for the resurrection of the pilot-physician concept programme. The Army's Director-General Medical Services suggested that the IAF "get its doctors back into the cockpit as motivation and bonhomie. As soon as they clear it, we [may] have them flying with us all over again. And we will catch them young." He was addressing Air Force doctors at an international conference at the Institute of Aerospace Medicine here on Friday.

Social media, he said, are the new bane of the Force, disrupting interpersonal communication and affecting pilots' sleep patterns. In 2013, a piliot who lost sleep continuously for several days because of an addiction to the social media, he said, had lost his life in an accident. A few years back, his now retired predecessor, Air Chief Marshal N.A.K,Browne, had expressed similar concerns over social media habits of aviators.

In these other crises, flight surgeons and aerospace medicine experts are the confidants of highly stressed pilots as well as their commanders. They keep the aviators in good shape mentally and physically. IAF realised this during the April Gaganshakti exercise when it did far more sorties than normal because doctors could monitor pilot fatigue well.

Air Marshal C.K. Ranjan, Commandant Armed Forces Medical College, Pune, said the pilot-physician plan being revived after four decades would help aerospace medicine professionals to handle the Force's operational challenges better. India has had eight flying doctors before and after 1947.