- India’s world-class facility for training astronauts will come up not in the space headquarters in Bangalore, nor in any glitzy metropolis. It will be established in three years at Challakere, a shrubby, arid oil seeds town on the Bangalore-Pune NH4 in Chitradurga district of Karnataka.
- The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has proposed a ₹2,700-crore master plan to create top infrastructure that will house its young Human Space Flight Centre (HSFC).
- The 400-acre ISRO land at Challakere will be the single-stop consolidating infrastructure and activities related to space travellers.
- The first set of four astronaut candidates for the first Gaganyaan mission of 2022 are to train in Russia.
The amount sought for the HSFC is over and above the ₹10,000-crore approved budget of Gaganyaan.
