PM Narendra Modi reveals names of astronauts picked for Gaganyaan mission

India will become only the fourth country after the United States, Russia, and China to conduct such a mission

India’s dream of becoming the fourth nation to independently send humans into space came one step closer to reality on Tuesday. Prime Minister Narendra Modi formally announced the names of four Indian Air Force (IAF) officers, who would be on board Gaganyaan, India’s first manned mission to space.

India will join an elite club of the United States, Russia, and China — the only nations to have conducted such a mission. The four astronaut-designates are Prashanth Nair, Angad Prathap, Ajit Krishnan, and Shubhanshu Shukla, all of whom are IAF test pilots. Gaganyaan comes 40 years after Rakesh Sharma became part of a Soviet Union space mission in 1984.

“The country has come to know about the four Gaganyaan passengers. These are not just four names or four people. These are four powers who will take the aspirations of 140 crore Indians to space,” Modi said.

“Forty years later, an Indian is going to space. But this time, the timing, the countdown and the rocket belong to us,” Modi added. The Prime Minister said that women scientists were playing a crucial role in the success of all the recent space missions of India. “India’s Nari Shakti is playing a pivotal role in the space sector. Be it Chandrayaan or Gaganyaan, no such mission can be imagined without women scientists,” he added.

In his address after unveiling the names of the quartet, Modi also cautioned against undue celebrity attention to the astronaut-designates as it could disturb them in their training. “I urge all people, including media professionals, to allow them to do their duties without hindrances. It’s the beginning of the real story. Let’s support them to the fullest,” Modi said.

The manned mission will carry three astronauts into a low earth orbit at an altitude of 400 km for a period of three days. The four candidates were picked from among 12 pilots after a rigorous selection process.

The selected officers were given generic space flight training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Russia in 2020. Following this, the four astronauts were undergoing a semester-based preparation at the Astronaut Training Facility. The Bengaluru-based facility had a curriculum that includes classroom lessons, physical fitness training, as well as simulator and flight suit training.

The training modules covered academic courses, Gaganyaan flight systems, micro-gravity familiarisation through parabolic flights, aero-medical training, recovery and survival training, mastering of flight procedures and crew training simulators. Periodical flying practice and yoga are also part of the regimen.

The Launch Vehicle Mark (LVM) rocket will set off the ambitious mission of the Indian Space Research Organisation. Recently, human readiness of the cryogenic engine, which will be used in LVM3 vehicles, was successfully tested. The first unmanned mission Gaganyaan (G1) is scheduled during the second quarter of 2024, as almost all the acceptance tests are completed. The second phase of the mission will involve the launch of Vyommitra, a female spacefaring humanoid robot. Derived from the Sanskrit words “vyoma” (space) and “mitra” (friend), Vyommitra will act as a prototype of Gaganyaan.

The human mission to space follows India’s celebrated entry into an elite league of nations with the soft landing of Chandrayaan-3 on the South Pole of the Moon and the launch of Aditya-L1, India’s first solar mission, last year.