About Yuri Suri

Yuri is a supersonic fighter pilot.
He has been a wing commander in the Indian Air Force.
He was the backup training astronaut for the Indo-Soviet Space Mission in 1984 which was a very high-profile mission.
He became an actor in theater and Bollywood.

About being a trained astronaut

I was not fully trained as an astronaut. I was the standby trainee astronaut in the sense that when we finally selected the people to get trained for the space mission.
We started with 52 test pilots and that was narrowed down to four.
Those four made two teams one was the main team that got trained in the USSR.
The second team was the standby team which comprised me and another one.
There was one squad leader and one wing commander on each team. I was the squad leader, so I was stand by to Rakesh Sharma.

1-16-10 Saturday