by Gurbir Singh
Still-born Astronaut
By the time Sharma’s mission ended, the American Space Shuttle had been flying successfully for three years. To recover some of the huge costs, a commercial objective was built into the Space Shuttle programme from the outset. NASA was looking for ways to promote the Shuttle’s commercial potential and offered to fly a payload specialist as part of the commercial deal to launch a satellite from the Space Shuttle.[784] This also served as NASA’s attempt to counter, compete with or simply emulate the USSR’s Interkosmos programme.
India was encouraged by the 1975 SITE programme to have its own communication satellite programme, resulting in the Indian Satellite (INSAT) series. ISRO commissioned four satellites of the first INSAT series (INSAT-1A through 1D) from the US-based Ford Aerospace and Communication Corporation. INSAT-1A was launched by a Delta launch vehicle in April 1982, and INSAT-1B was launched by the Shuttle in August 1983. INSAT-1C was assigned to mission STS-61-I for launch by the Space Shuttle Columbia on 25 June 1986. It would be launched along with three other payloads and a crew of five (including an Indian astronaut) for a seven-day mission.[785] Once the agreement was signed, the search for an Indian payload specialist to join the crew was initiated. Since INSAT was an ISRO project, the proposed astronaut was to be from ISRO, not the IAF.
Initially, 400 volunteers with science and engineering backgrounds applied from various ISRO centres. Forty were shortlisted for further assessment, including a week-long screening consisting of medical, stress and psychological tests. In the summer of 1985, seven candidates were invited to a final selection board headed by Professor U.R. Rao and included Rakesh Sharma and NASA astronaut Paul Joseph Weitz (born 1932). The panel selected two candidates, Paramaswaren Radhakrishnan (born 1943), a scientist from VSSC in Trivandrum, and Nagapathi Chidambar Bhat (born 1948), an engineer from ISRO Satellite Centre in Bangalore. The candidates had to complete additional medical tests determined by NASA at the Johnson Space Centre. ISRO chose to make the public announcement on the candidate selection only after the tests in the US were complete. Until such announcement, both were prohibited from sharing the decision publicly. In July 1985, both candidates flew out to Huston, Texas, and successfully completed the medical evaluation.
Radhakrishnan, as a 22-year-old electronics engineer, was recruited in 1966 to INCOSPAR, which in 1969 became ISRO. He had established a strong connection with the American space programme from the outset. As a new recruit, Radhakrishnan’s first role was to visit schools, colleges and universities as part of a three-member team teaching students about spaceflight. He crisscrossed India for almost a year using a NASA-supplied Chevrolet truck loaded with models of rockets, satellites, Apollo modules and cine film of rocket launches. In 1966, the US was still developing the Apollo programme (the Saturn 5 launch vehicle and Command, Service and Lunar Modules) that would take Americans to a return journey to the surface of the Moon. Later Radhakrishnan served in ISRO in numerous roles including the design and development of the power system for India’s first satellite, Aryabhata
Figure 14‑5 N.C. Bhat and P. Radhakrishnan. Credit Bert Viz
Bhat joined ISRO in 1973 just as India’s satellite programme was getting underway. Based at the ISRO Satellite Centre in Bangalore, he contributed to several of ISRO’s key space missions. He was involved in fabricating several elements for ISRO’s first satellite Aryabhata, the solar panel unfurling mechanism for IRS-1A, the antenna used on-board India’s first Moon mission Chandrayaan-1 and some of the experiments on SRE-1 in 2007, India’s first spacecraft that returned to Earth after 12 days in space.
Figure 14‑6 P. Radhakrishnan (back row third from left) and N. C. Bhat (back row third from right) during High-altitude Training with the Indian Airforce. 1985. Credit N.C. Bhat
Radhakrishnan was concerned that his age, 41, would work against him. He remembers a series of progressively tougher tests during the selection process, which included “countless questionnaires to fill in, and endless interviews, which mostly consisted of a monologue from the candidate, punctuated occasionally by a prompting question from the other side. The purpose was to probe into the deepest crevices of the candidate’s mind.”[786] Bhat recalls the use of eye drops to dilate the pupil so that pictures could be taken of the retina. He unnecessarily suffered from blurred vision for three days before his sight returned to normal “Later, I came to know that they had forgotten to put another eye drops which restores the dilated pupil to normal.”[787]
Preparation for the mission started following the successful medical tests conducted by NASA. The training included learning about the technical details of the INSAT satellites, how they were built, readied for launch and operated once in orbit. Both candidates visited the ISRO Satellite Centre in Bangalore, National Remote Sensing Agency (now National Remote Sensing Centre) in Hyderabad and SAC in Ahmedabad. Their training included gaining familiarity with high G forces in a centrifuge and altitude flights with the IAF.
The launch of INSAT-1C was scheduled for November 1986. During a five-day mission, the payload specialist would help prepare and launch INSAT-1C from the Space Shuttle cargo bay while in LEO. As with all space missions, there were a primary and a backup crew. The decision for primary/backup crew was to be made in September, that is, two months before launch. Until then, both would undergo identical training in India and the US. The Institute for Aerospace Medicine familiarised them with the space food that was being prepared by the Defence Food Research Laboratory (DFRL) in Mysore. The DFRL had provided food for the series of Indian Antarctic missions, as well as Sharma’s visit to Salyut 7. In addition to the NASA supplied food aboard the Space Shuttle (72 different items and 20 beverages), the Indian astronauts would take Indian space food, too. The preliminary group of 12 foods suggested by the DFRL included peas pulav, chicken pulav, lemon rice, chicken masala, peas paneer, kheer rice pudding, pineapple juice, mango juice, grape juice, sooji halwa, mango fruit bar and chapattis.[788]
Then, on 28 January 1986, Space Shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after launch. Radhakrishnan and Bhat were at Ford Aerospace in the US for familiarisation with the INSAT spacecraft. They did not see it live but an hour afterwards on TV. They described the horror of seeing the death of seven astronauts as “very tragic and touching.”[789] The incident sent shock waves across the US and space agencies around the world. The spectacular destruction during the launch of the most sophisticated spaceship ever built and the largest loss of life in a single US space incident brought NASA to an existential crisis. NASA’s initial statement indicated that the Space Shuttle mission would be rescheduled within six months, and ISRO’s provisional response was to proceed on that basis. However, the magnitude of the incident dictated that a longer period of review would be necessary.[790] Radhakrishnan concluded that his dream of spaceflight “went up in smoke in that moment.”[791]
It wasn’t just the Indian satellite and the astronaut flight that was impacted. Investigation of the Challenger accident was completed and the report published on 29 October 1986. Before the end of the year, on 27 December 1986, President Reagan (Ronald Wilson Reagan, 1911–2004) issued a directive asserting that the Space Shuttle “shall no longer provide launch services for commercial and foreign payload unless those spacecraft have unique, specific reasons to be launched aboard the space shuttle.”[792] Before the accident, two dozen Shuttle flights (there were four shuttles in total) were scheduled per year. Afterwards, it was just 14 flights per year.[793] In practice, it was even lower. Between the first and last Shuttle flights (12 April 1981 and 16 May 2011), 135 space missions were completed averaging to about 12 missions per year.[794] The mission to launch Indian communication satellites from the Space Shuttle ended abruptly, and with it, the hopes of two Indian engineers who had suddenly acquired and then lost the opportunity of spaceflight. On that news, Radhakrishnan concluded, “so here I am, a still-born astronaut.”[795]
Roadmap for Human Spaceflight
ISRO’s HSF programme has had
several false starts. In 2006, over 80 senior scientists met at ISRO headquarters in Bangalore concluding unanimously that time was right for ISRO to proceed with its HSF.[796] India’s Eleventh Five Year Plan[797] (2007–20012), stated “The development of a manned mission would take about 10 to 12 years, and it is planned to focus on developing critical technologies required during 11th plan period and achieve substantial progress towards realising a manned mission during 12th plan period”.
A mission with specific objectives related to a human crewed spacecraft was completed in the following year when ISRO demonstrated its ability to launch and recover a 550-kilogram module in January 2007. SRE-1was ISRO’s first attempt to recover a spacecraft it had launched. Following the launch aboard a PSLV and twelve days in Earth orbit, the capsule was remotely commanded to de-orbit and was recovered by the Indian coast guard after splashdown in the Indian Ocean. In addition to basic on-board microgravity experiments, ISRO tested the capsule’s navigation, guidance and control systems. The recovered SRE-1module is now a key exhibit in ISRO’s space museum in St. Mary Magdalene Church, the cradle of India’s space programme located within the grounds of VSSC in Kerala.
SRE-1was an important step towards the HSF programme. Its success helped ISRO secure a $2.1 million (Rs.8.5 crore) feasibility study on HSF. Six months after SRE-1, in June 2007, ISRO chairman constituted a steering committee on Human in Space Programme. The committee produced a four-volume report by early 2008 consisting of a project report, cost estimate, executive summary and a prologue. This report was submitted to the government in February 2008. So, by mid-2008, ISRO had a clear vision on how its HSF programme would develop based on detailed research, feasibility studies and a successful re-entry mission. By the end of the year, an opportunity arose for potential international collaboration that could hasten the programme timeline compared to ISRO’s doing it alone. A MoU was signed following Russian President Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev’s (born 1965) visit to India in December 2008. The Russians were probably influenced by India’s success with SRE-1in 2007 and ISRO’s first and highly successful mission to the Moon, Chandrayaan-1, which had been launched three months before Medvedev’s visit. Under this agreement, Russia would fly an Indian astronaut aboard a Russian spacecraft by 2013 and help India build its own spacecraft capable of carrying a human crew based on the Soyuz design for launch by GSLV-Mk3 by 2016.
Figure 14‑7 Space Recovery Experiment Capsule on display at VSSC. Credit ISRO
Buoyed by the success of SRE-1, Chandrayaan-1 and the prospects of rapid progress through the Russian MoU, the ISRO chairman Kasturirangan unveiled plans for two- and three-member crew modules designed for a week-long space mission during the 96th Indian Science Congress in January 2009.[798] K. Radhakrishnan, the VSSC director at the time but became ISRO chairman about nine months later, was also present. He also spoke about an Indian space mission by Indian astronauts in an Indian spacecraft, along with missions to the Moon and Mars. One spectacular media headline that followed was “India plans to hoist tricolour on the Moon by 2020.”[799] In 2009, the Government of India, too, appeared to be in favour not only of HSF but also of a human mission to land on the Moon by 2020.
India’s plans were very likely motivated by the September 2008 success of the Chinese Shenzhou 7 mission, which carried for the first time a crew of three. By 2016, China successfully completed 6 missions carrying 15 astronauts, 13 men and two women (Shenzhou 5 on 15 October 2003 with one astronaut; Shenzhou 6 on 16 October 2006 with two; Shenzhou 7 on 25 September 2008 with three; Shenzhou 7 on 25 November 2008 with three; Shenzhou 9 on16 June 2012 with three; Shenzhou 10 on 11 June 2013 with three and Shenzhou 11 on 17 October 2016 with three). Ostensibly, India is not in a space race with China, but in 2014, ISRO revealed that it prepared its mission to Mars in haste only after the Chinese mission to Mars, Yinghuo-1, aboard a Russian rocket failed to leave Earth orbit in November 2011.[800]
Over the next couple of years, the HSF programme made no real headway. The following year, 2010 was not a good year for ISRO. The MoU with Russia had not been productive and was terminated in October 2010.[801] Why that happened is unclear, but probably because India and Russia could not agree on the commercial arrangements underpinning the technology transfer of Soyuz from Russia to India.[802] Two GSLV launches, GSLV D3 in April and GSLV F06 in December, failed during launch.
The Twelfth FYP (2012-2017), published in 2011, merely restated the Eleventh FYP objective to “develop the critical technology and subsystems related to Human Space Flight programme”, confirming that, between the 11th and 12th Plans, India’s HSF programme made no major progress. Unexpected media statements in 2012 from the IAF, claiming that the IAF was proceeding with the astronaut crew selection process, added to the confusion.[803] The source of the confusion was to some extent competitive posturing between the IAF and ISRO. The IAF has had a strong connection with the HSF in the past. Astronaut training is centred around the Institute of Aerospace Medicine which is an IAF body, and the first astronaut, Rakesh Sharma, was a wing commander in the IAF.[804]
At the end of 2013, ISRO issued a press release insisting that media reports on Manned Mission to Moon were unfounded.[805] Despite the absence of an essential element, the heavy launch vehicle, ISRO has been quietly making progress towards human spaceflight capability. In March 2012, the Minister of State confirmed in the Indian parliament that Rs.145 crore ($22.5 million) had been allocated for ISRO to pursue the development of critical technologies for the HSF programme.[806] These funds were split between various tasks: Rs.61 crore ($9 million) for the crew module, Rs.27 crore ($4 million) for qualifying the launch vehicles for a human crew, Rs.36 crore ($5.5 million) for contracts with institutions and Rs.21 crore ($4 million) for other tasks, such as crew module aerodynamics, space suits and life support systems. A mock-up of the crew capsule was tested in a sub-orbital flight on 18 December 2014 as the LVM3-X/CARE mission, a sub-orbital version of the SRE-1 but using the LVM3 with a non-active cryogenic third stage.
Figure 14‑8 Crew Module in the Andaman Sea after Splashdown. 18 December 2014. Credit ISRO
The HSF programme is not one of ISRO’s priorities, but with the allocated funds, it has been quietly working on the development of an astronaut training programme and an astronaut crew capsule under the guidance of a dedicated project director for the HSF programme.[807] Progress is being made in many key prerequisites, including space suits, environmental and life support systems, and emergency Capsule Abort System at the launch pad and during the early phase of launch. Since March 2009, ISRO has had a MoU with the IAF’s Institute of Aerospace Medicine to conduct basic research on the physical and psychological requirements for the human spaceflight crew and expand the institute’s existing facilities to cater for the HSF programme as a pre-project R&D activity. ISRO has also entered into agreements with a Bangalore-based third party to initiate the development of spacesuits and a Mysore-based company to develop a space food menu for Indian astronauts.[808] The initial plan envisaged a crew module designed for two, but this has since been expanded to include a 3-astronaut variant. Preliminary designs indicate that the crew module will be a twin-walled structure with a sealed, all-welded internal shell. A service module with a re-entry engine is to support the crew module. Initial plans call for a mission duration of a few hours for the first mission that could be extended up to seven days. The orbit has been designed to allow the crew capsule to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere automatically in the event of a service module engine failure.[809] The capsule would be launched from Sriharikota using GSLV-Mk3/LVM3 return for a splashdown in the Bay of Bengal or the Indian Ocean. The crew module is designed with some capability to manoeuvre in the atmosphere along both down and across ranges to support navigation to a predetermined splashdown location.
Once the launch vehicle (LVM3) is ready, integrated tests with the crew module, including the Emergency Capsule Abort System (CAS), can commence. The CAS is a small rocket at the top of the main
launch vehicle. In an emergency, it fires like an ejector seat (but is located above the crew) and pulls the crew capsule away from the launch vehicle for a parachute landing a few kilometres away from the launch pad.[810]
Prior to the first human orbital flight, multiple test-flights of the crew module in orbit with dummy passengers and non-human occupants (the US had used a chimpanzee, the USSR used 4 dogs and the Chinese had used rats and guinea pigs. These initial missions test various subsystems, including life support, guidance, navigation and re-entry.[811] The USSR had conducted seven flights without human occupants using varying sophistication in the onboard subsystems before Yuri Gagarin’s historic flight on 12 April 1961. The crew capsule of each version was an improvement on the previous. Only three of the seven flights were completely successful before Gagarin made his attempt. Between 1959 and 1961, the US too conducted over a dozen tests on the ground and sub-orbital launch on their Mercury spacecraft before America’s first astronaut Alan Shepard’s (1923–1998) flight in May 1961.
China conducted four test flights of their Shenzhou spacecraft before their first human spaceflight with Yang Liwei (born 1965) in 2003. ISRO had planned to follow-up SRE-1 with SRE-2, but following a series of delays, SRE-2 has been quietly withdrawn.[812] ISRO’s 2014 LVM3-X/Crew Module Atmospheric Re-entry Experiment test flight was sub-orbital, and the crew module was of an initial rudimentary design. Since then, ISRO has not scheduled any additional test flights of the crew module, so a date for India’s first flight with a human crew is not imminent and remains unknown.