Not so long ago, people in space were either astronauts or cosmonauts. Then the Chinese gave us taikonauts. Now, another billion-strong nation with an ambitious space programme – India – is seeking a new breed of spacefarers: vyomanauts, according to Indian media.
The tongue-twisting term comes from the Sanskrit for sky or space (vyoma, pronounced veeohma). The closest Sanskrit word to astronaut would have been vyomagami, for something that passes in the sky. The other word for an Indian spacefarer that had been bandied about was gaganaut (gagan is also Sanskrit for sky). But “vyoma is very good”, says Choudury Upender Rao, a professor of Sanskrit studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. “It’s an appropriate choice.”
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is now in the process of choosing four vyomanauts from a pool of 200 fighter pilots, P. Madhusoodanan of the Indian Air Force .
India’s first crewed space mission is scheduled for 2015, designs for which were unveiled last year by Madhavan Nair, former chairman of ISRO. The three-person vehicle will initially carry two vyomanauts into 275-kilometre low-Earth orbit. Before this flight, ISRO will launch its .
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