Chennai: The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the European Space Agency (ESA) have entered into an agreement to collaborate in microgravity research in the upcoming Axion-4 mission, to be piloted by Indian astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla
marking country’s India’s first crewed International Space Station (ISS) mission.
In an update, ISRO said it had recently entered into a pact with ESA to cooperate on activities related to Astronaut Training, Mission Implementation and Research Experiments.
This agreement provides an opportunity for undertaking joint microgravity experiments.
In this regard, microgravity research experiments by Indian Principal Investigators (PIs) have been jointly shortlisted by ISRO and ESA for implementation on ISS during Axiom-4 mission:
They were Comparative growth and proteomics responses of cyanobacteria on urea and
nitrate in microgravity, impact of Microgravity on Growth and Yield Parameters in Food Crop
Seeds.
It said currently, these shortlisted microgravity experiments are under various phases of
evaluation in view of safety driven operational philosophy of human spaceflight missions.
Further, ISRO and ESA will be jointly carrying out human research and other scientific and
technology demonstration experiments.
In addition to these, cooperation in microgravity research with other space agencies during
Axiom-4 mission is also being actively pursued.
The field of microgravity research with potential applications in human health research,
physical sciences, material sciences, novel pharmaceutical development and biotechnology
offers significant opportunities to national scientific community.
The Indian Human Space Program, maiden Gaganyaan mission, aims to encourage and
support the Indian scientific community in microgravity research activities through flight
opportunities in ISRO’smissions as well as joint international efforts.
