IAF Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla has launched his book ‘The Second Orbit’. He said that its aim is to inspire people to contribute to the country’s space program by sharing their journey. Former ISRO chairmen also praised the book and called it important for the next generation.
Indian Air Force Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla on Saturday said his newly launched book ‘The Second Orbit’ is an effort to share his journey and inspire people across the country to learn about the field of space and astronomy.
The aim of ‘The Second Orbit’ is to inspire the youth.
Speaking after the launch of the book, Group Captain Shukla said that it is impossible to personally visit every part of a huge country like India. He said the book will help him reach out to millions of people and encourage them to contribute to the country’s space programme. He said, “The aim is to share this journey with everyone. Writing about it was an effort to reach out to people, as it is impossible to physically visit everywhere in such a vast country; it is a way of sharing the experience and hopefully inspire others to pursue this field, participate in it and contribute to the nation.”
Scientist and former ISRO chairman A.S. Kiran Kumar said Shukla’s book ‘The Second Orbit’ will provide first-hand knowledge to the next generation, who can learn from the experience of someone who went to space and returned to Earth. “It will show kids what really happens behind the scenes and what a person who goes to space and comes back experiences. So, it’s a great opportunity for them to get first-hand knowledge from someone who has experienced it,” he said.
Gaganyaan Mission: Security and Challenges
Shukla also talked about India’s Gaganyaan mission and said that its launch date will be decided only after the completion of necessary tests to ensure the highest safety standards. “Human space missions are quite challenging. A right balance has to be struck to achieve the right level of safety – it can neither be too high nor too low. As a result, we have to conduct a lot of tests. I believe it would be appropriate to comment on the date only after we complete some of these tests, because then we will have enough information,” he said.
Gaganyaan is India’s flagship human spaceflight program led by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). The objective of this mission is to send a crew of three astronauts into low Earth orbit for three days and then return them safely to Earth.
Why is Gaganyaan technically difficult?
Former ISRO chairman S. Somnath said the book documents Shukla’s journey and explains how the Axiom-4 mission became possible under the vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He also said that the Gaganyaan mission poses far greater technical challenges as India has to develop its own human spaceflight capabilities. He said, “We discussed the journey of Shubhanshu Shukla and how the vision of the Prime Minister made that flight possible in Axiom 4. But again, there is a different path for Gaganyaan. So I was emphasizing that Gaganyaan is a very difficult journey because developing a human space capsule and understanding the knowledge required to build it, it is not easily obtained from others. So we need to research and find out. The issues are more challenging because we are going to very high accelerations.” Let’s face (acceleration).”
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