ISRO congratulates Elon Musk’s SpaceX and NASA on a ‘historical first launch’ of human spaceflight

• The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) tweeted congratulations to Elon Musk’s SpaceX and NASA on the successful ‘historical first launch’ of human spaceflight.
  
• “Great job,” ISRO wrote.
  
• The Indian space agency is pegged to launch its own maiden human spaceflight, Gaganyaan, in 2022.
  

The Indian Space Research Organisation took to Twitter to congratulate Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the US-based National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on a successful ‘historical first launch’ of the Demo-2 Mission.


Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 and on May 30 EST it successfully launched its first people — veteran NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley — into Earth’s orbit blasting them towards the International Space Station (ISS) aboard the Falcon 9 rocket.

The Crew Dragon spacecraft — later named the ‘Endeavour’ — successfully docked with the ISS, 402 kilometres above the plant’s surface, at 1:02 pm ET. After around 20 minutes of safety checks, the two astronauts floated through the hatch into the $150 billion orbiting lab. “It’s been a real honour to be a super-small part of this nine-year endeavour, since last time a US spaceship has docked with the ISS,” Hurley said after stepping onto the ISS.


The Endeavour was designed by SpaceX and funded by NASA. Musk was overcome with emotion while addressing the press during the post-launch press conference. “I’m really quite overcome with emotion on this day. It’s kind of hard to talk, frankly,” he said.

Not only was the launch a milestone for Musk and SpaceX but it was also the first time in nearly a decade that NASA was launching its astronauts from US soil since the Space Shuttle Program was shut down in 2011. “It’s a little hard to process. I think at this point I haven’t sorted out my emotions,” Musk told reporters.

ISRO’s plans for Gaganyaan
ISRO is working on its own plans for India’s maiden human spaceflight program, Gaganyaan pegged to launch in 2022. Their indigenously developed spacecraft is designed to carry three people. The shortlisted pilots from the Indian Air Force (IAF) are currently undergoing training in Russia.


Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) is manufacturing the crew model and had its first un-crewed experimental flight on 18 December 2014. According to the company, the design of the crew module was complete as of May 2019.

The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) is providing the human-centric systems and technologies, like space-grade food, healthcare, radiation measurements, for the astronauts.

A humanoid robot called Vyommitra will also be joining the three astronauts on their ride. It is capable of detecting any environmental changes within the cabin and giving out warnings.

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