Gaps between academia and the industry need to be bridged with high technology readiness for real world solutions to enable students and youth to avail the opportunities in the space sector in the coming years, India’s first astronaut to visit the International Space Station and Gaganyatri, Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, said on Thursday.

In an exclusive interaction with the The New Indian Express on the sidelines of the concluding day of the three-day Bengaluru Tech Summit-2025, he said the best way to navigate this gap between academia and industry is from the way one learns.

“Whatever you learn, you should translate it into real-world solutions. We need to increasingly involve academia and get them to increase the technology readiness levels, and then the industry should take over,” he said, stressing on the need to create an ecosystem where everyone is involved. “These are national efforts and exercises, so we need everyone to be involved to achieve this.”

Shukla pointed out that as things are gradually changing in the space sector, and in the time ahead non-Indian Air Force candidates will also become astronauts. “The Indian Air Force training does help. But it is not that non-Air Force people cannot join as astronauts. They can, and they will in the coming times…”

‘Space sector will be open to all fields’

“Eventually, when you have flown once or twice in space, then the opportunities will open up for everyone. This is what we have to do finally. We have to enable all those who want to go into space, to go into space in the future,” Shukla said.

He said as the technologies and solutions can come from diverse domains, those looking at availing opportunities in the space sector can be from any field, be it science & technology, arts or any field. “Technologies that need to be developed span a diverse range and all of them have to be fulfilled when we have to achieve things like these,” he said.

On training for India’s first manned space mission, Gaganyaan, scheduled to be launched sometime in the first quarter of 2027, Shukla stressed on the limitations of simulation training and the importance of the actual mission.

“There is no good way of simulating everything in the environment of space. We do zero gravity or micro-gravity training in the aircraft, but that is only for 30-40 seconds exposure. I don’t think there is really any good way of simulating everything. The training prepares you up to a point, and from there on, you use your skills to navigate the difference that is there between the simulation and the actual mission,” he said.

On the experience he gained on the Axiom Mission which took him to the ISS, Shukla said that needs to be improved for India’s upcoming Gaganayaan and the country’s first space station, the Bharatiya Antriksh Station (BAS) missions, scheduled to begin in 2035. “We have to send humans to space and bring them back safely.

We also have sanctioned space station and moon mission programmes. It is all laid down in the space policy. When you look at it from the outside, the problems can be written down on paper, but when you face them, you realise there is a need to solve even the small issues. You need to solve a lot of challenges that you come across.

That is what makes it complex and challenging,” he said. “Yes, we understand what needs to be done, but there is no one single way. There is a need to evaluate what will work and to understand how we can use the current technology by ensuring that they are made future proof. If you send up a space station, it will be in space for the next 20-30 years. So how do we assume the changes in technologies? How do we absorb all of that? These are the challenges and questions we are asking right now. And we are trying to answer them.”