NEW DELHI, April 3. /TASS/. The crew of the Gaganyaan, India’s first national spacecraft which is slated to go on its maiden space voyage in late 2025, has undergone an intensely in-depth training course at Russia’s Star City training center, first Indian cosmonaut and Hero of the Soviet Union Rakesh Sharma, who also prepared for a space flight at Star City, told TASS.

"I think the training was more in depth. In my case, there was a very, very short time. And I think the aims of the flight were also different. To be very frank, I think since the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) was not preparing for manned space programs, my flight had more of a geopolitical meaning. So, as you know, 40 years have now elapsed since I went on that flight; it's only now that we are embarking upon a manned space program," Sharma said. "The training that the current crop of four ‘gaganauts’ have received has been a lot more in-depth and more substantive [than my pre-flight training was]."

Sharma emphasized that the thorough training of the Indian national crew also shows "the cooperative nature of Roscomos." "In the future, we will probably be needing to work together," he believes.

In August 2018, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi officially announced that his country would send the first national space crew into orbit by August 2022, when India would be celebrating 75 years of liberation from British colonial rule. The project's name Gaganyaan (derived from the Sanskrit word for heaven: "gagana") means "celestial ship." However, due to delays stemming from the coronavirus pandemic, which halted most work on the project in March 2020, the Gaganyaan mission is now scheduled for 2025. Four crew members have already been trained at Russia's Star City and are now continuing their training in India.

India's first cosmonaut, Rakesh Sharma, was a squadron commander in the Indian Air Force in 1982 when he was selected for an international Soviet-Indian space flight and trained at Star City in the Soviet Union. Sharma was part of the crew of the Soyuz T-11 spacecraft, along with Soviet cosmonauts Yury Malyshev and Gennady Strekalov. The spacecraft launched on April 3, 1984 and docked with the Salyut-7 orbital station. The international crew returned to Earth on April 11, 1984. Sharma's flight lasted 7 days, 21 hours and 41 minutes.