Rakesh Sharma
Rakesh Sharma is an Indian astronauts|Indian] cosmonaut and a pilot of the Indian Air Force. He became the first Indian to travel to outer space, when he flew aboard Soyuz T-11 on 3 April 1984 as part of the Soviet Interkosmos programme.
Early and personal life
Rakesh Sharma was born on 13 January 1949 in Patiala into a Punjabi family. He attended St. George's Grammar School and graduated from Nizam College, Hyderabad. He joined the National Defence Academy as an air force plebe in July 1966.Sharma married Madhu, and the couple have three children including film director Kapil Sharma.
Career
Sharma was commissioned into the Indian Air Force as a pilot in 1970. He flew 21 combat missions piloting the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 during the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971. In 1984,he was promoted to the rank of squadron leader. On 20September 1982, he was selected for space travel as part of a joint programme between the IAF and the Soviet Interkosmos space agency.Cosmonaut
Sharma became the first Indian to travel to outer space when he flew aboard the Soviet Soyuz T-11 mission, launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic on 3 April 1984. The Soyuz-T spacecraft carried a three member crew, consisting of the ship's commander Yury Malyshev, flight engineer Gennadi Strekalov, and Sharma as a research cosmonaut. It docked with the Salyut 7 orbital station, and Sharma spent 7days, 21hours, and 40minutes aboard the Salyut 7 during which his team conducted scientific and technical studies which included forty-threeexperimental sessions. His work was mainly in the fields of bio-medicine and remote sensing. The crew landed back on 11 April 1984. After landing, the crew held a joint news conference at Moscow in the presence of Soviet officials and then Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi. When Gandhi asked Sharma how India looked from outer space, he replied, "Sare Jahan Se Accha", in a reference to a poem by Allama Iqbal. With Sharma's voyage, India became the 14thnation to send a man to outer space.Post-retirement
Sharma retired as a wing commander and later joined Hindustan Aeronautics Limited in 1987. He initially served as the chief test pilot at the HAL division at Nashik before moving to Bangalore to work as the company's chief test pilot. He retired from flying in 2001.Awards and decorations
Sharma was conferred the honour of the Hero of the Soviet Union upon his return from space, and is the only Indian to have been conferred this honour. India also conferred its highest peacetime gallantry award, the Ashoka Chakra, on him and the twoSoviet members of his mission, Malyshev and Strekalov.The citation for the Ashoka Chakra reads as follows: