Pakistan announces to send its first astronaut in 2022, selection to begin from next year

Pakistan announces to send its first astronaut in 2022, selection to begin from next year

With India making advancements in its space research, Pakistan too is following the neighbouring nation. Pakistan Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry has recently announced that the country is currently working on a space mission and the selection of the astronauts is under process. The minister also added that the space mission is to start from February 2020.

The Pakistani minister further let the media know that the space mission to be started from 2020 will lead to sending the astronauts to space in 2022 for which China’s satellite launch facilities will be used by the country.

Seeing India making the successful launch of the Chandrayaan-2 which happens to be India’s second lunar mission, Pakistan too has taken the decision of commencing its space mission.

Making the announcement through a tweet, minister Fawad Chaudhury wrote, “Proud to announce that selection process for the first Pakistani to be sent to Space shall begin from February 2020. Fifty people will be short-listed. The list will then come down to 25 and in 2022 we will send our first person to space. This will be the biggest space event of our country.”

https://twitter.com/fawadchaudhry/status/1154293483504619520

Speaking about the selection process of the astronauts, the minister added that the selection is being conducted under the guidance of the Pakistani Air Force. He added that the Air force will be the custodian of the selection process and globally pilots are selected for this space mission. At the initial stage, 50 pilots will be selected for the time being and it will further be decreased to 25 and then to 10. These final 10 pilots will undergo training and among them, one will be chosen to be sent to space.

Before this, Pakistan had sent two indigenously-built satellites, onboard the Chinese Long March (LM-2C) rocket in 2018 from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre at the Gobi desert.

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