BANGALORE: The four Indian astronaut-elects have completed training on crew actions in the event of an abnormal descent module landing in three different scenarios. First, they completed the training of such a landing in wooded and marshy areas in winter in February 2020, on the water surface in June 2020, and in the steppe in summer late last month (July 2020).

Confirming this, Glavkosmos, a subsidiary of Russian space organisation ROSCOSMOS, said: “...In June 2020, all Indian astronaut-elects passed training in short-term weightlessness mode aboard the IL-76MDK special laboratory aircraft, and in July, they were trained to lift aboard a helicopter while evacuating from the descent module landing point.”

ISRO’s Human Spaceflight Centre (HSC) had signed an agreement with Glavkosmos for the training of Indian astronauts in 2019 and the training of the four astronaut-elects in Russia commenced on February 10. All their training is taking place at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre (GCTC).

“The programme for Indian astronauts also includes training in a centrifuge and in a hyperbaric chamber to prepare their organisms for sustaining spaceflight factors, such as G-force, hypoxia and pressure drops. These training modules are to be held in the near future,” Glavkosmos said in a statement shared with TOI.

The astronauts are undergoing training at the GCTC following the courses of the general space training programme and of the systems of the Soyuz MS crewed spacecraft. The completion of their training at GCTC is scheduled for the first quarter of 2021.

“Their training also includes a number of courses necessary for prospective Indian cosmonauts. The regular courses comprise medical and physical training, learning Russian (as one of the main international languages of communication in space), and studying the configuration, structure and systems of the Soyuz crewed spacecraft,” Glavkosmos added.

Further, the organisation said that all four astronaut-elects are healthy and that their status is monitored on a daily basis, and once every three months by highly professional GCTC doctors.

As reported by TOI earlier, the four Indian astronaut-elects in Russia, whose training was suspended at the end of March due to Covid-19, had resumed the same from May 12.