‘To become an astronaut, love science, do science, and become science’

Group Captain Angad Pratap discusses the qualities and requirements to become an astronaut, emphasizing dedication to science and space exploration.

“To become an astronaut, the only thing one needs to do is love science, do science and become science,” said astronaut Group Captain Angad Pratap. He was delivering a talk on “Who Can Become Astronaut?” on Friday as part of the World Space Week celebration.

“To become an astronaut is basically to commit your life to the cause of space, research, and science. It is not about getting famous or getting a space ride, or seeing Earth from space that all of us can do sitting here on Earth in a video as well. So choose carefully,” he said.

Group Captain Pratap, who is one of the four astronauts selected for India’s maiden human spaceflight mission, Gaganyaan, said as of February 2024, only 681 people have gone to space, while the estimated number of people believed to have lived on Earth until today is approximately around 117 billion.

He said the core qualities to become an astronaut are honesty and integrity, stress-taking capability, team person, cognitive skills, core knowledge set, skilled knowledge set, critical thinking, real-time decision-making, rejection handling capacity, gratitude along with the ability to stay forced, determined, grounded, physically fit disciplined for years and years together.

Group Captain Pratap also spelt out the average day of an Indian astronaut, which includes yoga training, supervised nutrition, core academic training, technical meetings with scientists, simulator training, aeromedical training, parallel core education, human-machine interface development, physician and psychological training, para jumping among others.

He said applications for becoming an ISRO astronaut would be invited. There would be medical and psychological evaluations. “The expected age of applicants would be below 35 years, and credit would be given for core academic competence, meaningful science research work, skill sets, sports achievements, non-technical qualifications and professional jet flying experience,” he said.

He added that astronauts would be classified into three different categories, similar to the batting line-up of a cricket team, which are openers or pioneer astronauts, middle order or stabiliser astronauts and tailenders or finisher astronauts.