For ISRO, the AXIOM-4 (AX-4) mission will remove the cost to the Group’s captain Shubhanshu Shukla (Shox) for the benefit and learning to the international space station (ISS).There is a fraction of Rs 548 crore spent on missions that India will need to spend on copying the same training, exposure and system-level experience, V Narayanan, president of ISRO V Narayanan in his first special interview about the multinational commercial mission.Speaking to Houston, Narayan said that learning results-interpreting passenger training (for two astronauts), mission operations, and hardware-software-human interfaces-cannot be measured purely in monetary terms. Narayanan said, “For the country of 140 million people, everything we have spent is only marginal,”. For that, he said: “We have gained access to infrastructure and experience, which will otherwise require thousands of crores.” If one sees per capita cost on Indian population, it adds up to Rs 4 per head.Look beyond the rupeeNarayanan, dismissing observation that AX-4 is “just a commercial mission”, said that discussion on such strategic missions should be linked in long-term capacity building rather than short-term financial arithmetic.He said, “For programs like Gaganan, which extends up to Rs 20,000 crore, including follow-on mission, these initial investment is necessary. Training, confidence, exposure, system understanding-these are fundamental,” he said.He said that maturity is necessary in public discourse. “People should identify that not all benefits can be determined. But they can certainly be measured in preparations and capacity,” he said.Five takeawaysNarayanan identified the five major regions where AX-4 will directly strengthen India’s human spacecraft capabilities: training risk, confidence construction, operational experience, system-and-process understanding and cross-disciplinary learning.He said, “Our astronauts trained in world-class facilities, which has been followed by space situations including microgravity and life-support systems. They would spend crores from each hour training, if we were doing ourselves to repeat the infrastructure,” he said.He said that while interacting with experienced astronauts – people who have flew into space several times or have done several spacewalks – helped promote the trust of Indian crew members and mission teams.Prashant Nair-Nar, the captain of the astronaut-Shaks and his backup group, learned how to work in space as a team, handle real-time challenges, and to use. He said that by working and observing the ISS on the mission, India has given insight into module design, layout, onboard systems and procedures that will feed in future gaganan and space station design.“We, of course, have our own design and technology, but all this experience will help us develop them better,” he said. ISRO EngineersNarayanan, who is making leading efforts to ensure astronaut safety, said that he himself has received from observing operations in Houston. He said, “From data handling to high-level system safety discussions, our understanding of the end-to-end process has increased. It cannot be acquired by simulation or literature review alone,” he said.He said that this experience is equally valuable for backom mission teams and decision makers, who will now have reality references to draw during Gaganan preparation. Toi reported some nuances last week that ISRO team is learning back in Houston, where Mission for AX-4 is there.space StationIndia plans to build their space station after the Gaganian crew flights. Narayanan said that direct contact for the ISS environment will inform the design, configuration and operational plan of the proposed Indian facility.He said, “We only studied ISS on paper. Now we are watching it in action. We cannot adopt the same model, but this will help us make the informed design option.”
