Before Shubhanshu Shukla lifts off, the story of Rakesh Sharma: the first Indian to go to space

Although technically non-aligned, India had drifted towards the Soviet Union since the late 1960s. Among other things, this led to significant cooperation in the space sector. The Soviets provided equipment and technical assistance, apart from facilitating the launch of India’s earliest satellites Aryabhatta (1975), Bhaskara I (1979) and Bhaskara II (1981).

Sharma’s spaceflight in 1984 was the pinnacle of Indo-Soviet cooperation in space. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev suggested a joint India-Soviet space mission to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi during his visit to India in 1980. The mission received official confirmation a year later.

The IAF was tasked with selecting two pilots who would be given cosmonaut training by the Soviets. Its eventual choice: Sharma and Ravish Malhotra, both accomplished IAF test pilots.

Test pilots, adept at handling and analysing performance of all kinds of aircraft, are often considered to be the crème de la crème of pilots. This makes them ideal for manning spacecraft: historically many astronauts/cosmonauts — including Neil Armstrong, the first man to step on the Moon — have been test pilots, as is Shubhanshu Shukla.

From September 1982, Sharma and Malhotra underwent rigorous training, primarily at the Yuri Gagarin Centre in Star City, some 50 km from Moscow.

Boris Volynov, the senior administrator at the cosmonaut training centre, said of the two trainees: “They are goal-oriented people. Ravish and Rakesh came to us with no knowledge of Russian. Within a short time they not only learned it, but developed a good command of it; they take their lecture notes, read documents and take exams — all in Russian” (as per a report in Soviet Weekly on April 21, 1983).

Sharma was eventually chosen to be a part of the three-member crew — along with veteran Soviet cosmonauts Yuriy Malyshev and Gennady Strekalov — which would travel to the Salyut 7 orbital station in 1984. Malhotra was a part of the backup crew.

Sharma’s week long stay in space

The Soyuz T-11 spacecraft perched atop a 14-storey rocket lifted off from Baikonur at 6.38 pm IST on April 3, 1984. “The liftoff was an awesome spectacle as the rocket streaked into a clear sky with its tail of flame filling the space with crimson glow and the roar of its mighty engine shaking the earth for miles around,” this newspaper’s April 4, 1984 edition reported.

Nine minutes after the launch, the spacecraft entered its pre-determined orbit around Earth, making Sharma the first Indian, and 138th person overall, to voyage into space. India became only the 14th nation to send a person to space.

On April 4, 25 hours after lift-off, the Soyuz T-11 spacecraft docked with the Salyut 7 space station. The crew spent the next week conducting various scientific experiments aboard the staton, which orbited Earth at an altitude of more than 200 km.

“There was so much hectic activity on board the spaceship, so many things that each of us had to do, that we literally had no time to sit around and stare into space…,” Sharma later said in an interview (as quoted by Burgess and Vis).

One of the most important scientific objectives of the mission was the Terra experiment for which Sharma and co clicked a series of pictures of India from space in order to “study the natural resources of the subcontinent and adjacent areas of the Indian Ocean”.

The cosmonauts “photographed the Nicobar and Andaman islands with a view to detecting shoals that might yield oil and gas, inspected the forested areas and tree plantations in the central part of the subcontinent, the Ganges River basin, the glacial and snow cover of the Himalayas, and individual ocean areas in order to determine their biological productivity,” Burgess and Vis wrote.

The crew also carried out several material science experiments exploring the possibility of exploiting conditions of micro-gravity to produce special forms of metallic materials which are impervious to radiation, high temperatures and aggressive media.

Then there were a bunch of medical experiments geared towards learning more about the effects of microgravity on human physiology, including muscles and the cardiovascular system. One experiment actually began three months before lift-off, with Sharma and Malhotra switching from the Soviet fitness regimen to one based on yoga.

The idea was to “assess whether yoga might assist space travelers to cope better with weightlessness, and even overcome… ‘space sickness’ that impaired the performance of some astronauts and cosmonauts during their first few days in space”. Sharma even practised yoga — a set of five pre-determined asanas — daily on the space station, tethered to some gym equipment for support in the microgravity environment of space.

A hugely symbolic event

Rakesh Sharma went to space at a time when India’s own space programme was in its infancy, and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) was decades away from even contemplating sending an Indian to space. As such, the mission had limited practical benefits for the Indian space programme.
The ever-humble Sharma has repeatedly underplayed his personal achievement, calling the mission “a hugely symbolic event” more than anything else. Of course, that does not make it any less important.

Apart from being a major milestone in Indo-Soviet relations — Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on the day of the launch said that the mission “was yet another outstanding example of constructive cooperation for the good of our two peoples” — for millions of Indians, Sharma’s flight was an inspirational moment, one that evoked national pride.

Planners were very much conscious of the mission’s symbolic importance. Sharma was sent to space with a small amount of soil from Raj Ghat, and portraits of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, President Zail Singh, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, and then Defence Minister (later President) R Venkataraman, as well as “fresh mangoes and other Indian foods for all the crew to consume aboard the Salyut-7 station”, Burgess and Vis wrote.

During the stay, Sharma had a televised conversation with PM Gandhi which was broadcast to millions of Indians on Doordarshan.

The cosmonaut’s prompt reply to the Prime Minister asking him how India looked from space is today the stuff of legend. “Sare jahan se achcha (Better than the entire world),” said Sharma, quoting Iqbal’s iconic patriotic poem.

The crew made a triumphant return to Earth on April 11, 1984.