Russian cosmonaut Sergi Revin on Thursday said Russia would extend all possible help to India in its endeavour to launch its own space station.
Mr. Revin made the statement while addressing around 250 students of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. He also inaugurated the institute’s exhibition dedicated to space exploration.
Mr. Revin has spent 124 days, 23 hours and 52 minutes at the International Space Station (ISS) during a deep space expedition in 2012. He also told the students he would help them get funding from the ISS for their experiments.
“I welcome the idea of India planning to launch its own space station and Russia is more than happy to collaborate with India to help them achieve this. My visit to India aims to strengthen the ties between Indian and Russia in the fields of culture, sports, education as well as economic. I will try to help India in all the space endeavours in possible ways,” Mr. Revin said.
He also gave the students a virtual tour of his four-month-long space journey through a short video. “The flight of imagination is more important than the physical journey into space,” he said.
Mr. Revin was honoured with the title, Hero of the Russian Federation, for his exploration aboard Soyuz TMA-04. Mr. Revin recalled his journey, not only during the expedition but also as a cosmonaut.
“The selection is indeed tough, but my determination to become a cosmonaut was so strong, that I happily faced all the challenges in the way. I focused on my self-development and also read a lot of books about cosmonauts,” Mr. Revin said.
He said there was no difficulty in communication even though he was working with people from the United States of America and the Middle East during the expedition.
“We became very close as we shared similar interests in our free time. We has training sessions in Moscow and in the USA, so by the time we started our mission, we had become very good friends and we were well prepared to work as a team,” Mr. Revin said.
