Bengaluru Will Soon Turn Space Hub As ISRO Decides To Train Future Astronauts In The IT City

India's silicon city will soon churn out astronauts for India's proposed space missions as a training centre for astronauts is all set to come up near Bengaluru International airport.

This development comes just days after the Independence day announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi about India's crewed space missions set to be launched by 2022. As reported by the Times of India, this astronaut training facility which has been in the pipeline for 10 years, will come up on Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO's) land which is about 10 kilometre from the airport in Devanahalli.

Tentatively named the Astronaut Training and Biomedical Engineering Centre, the facility which will be built in collaboration with the Indian Air Force’s Institute of Aviation Medicine and aims at mimicking the Russian facility which trains astronauts from around the world. However, the astronauts who will be part of India's first human space mission in 2022 will be trained in either the United States or Russia. But as confirmed by ISRO chairman K Sivan to the daily, future missions will have astronauts trained at the silicon city facility.

The facility will be equipped to train astronauts for surviving in a zero-gravity environment and will prepare personnel for manned missions in recovery-and-rescue operations, the study of radiation environment and long journeys across space through water simulation.

Also Read: How Close Is India To Developing Human Spaceflight Capability?