These four astronauts are scheduled to launch on ISRO’s Gaganyaan mission into low-Earth orbit.
The names of the four astronauts who will travel to low-Earth orbit as part of the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) Gaganyaan mission—the country’s first crewed space mission—were revealed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday. The Prime Minister announced while in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre.
Angad Prathap, Ajit Krishnan, Shubanshu Shukla, and Prashanth Balakrishnan Nair (Group Captain) have been chosen to be the astronauts on India’s first crewed space mission. They have all served as test pilots for a long time and are qualified to act quickly if something goes wrong. They are all group captains or wing commanders in the Indian Air Force (IAF).
The space agency’s astronaut training facility in Bengaluru has been the training ground for the four astronauts. The astronauts were chosen at the Institute of Aerospace Medicine, part of the IAF.In June 2019, a memorandum of understanding was signed by ISRO and Glavkosmos, a division of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, for the training of four astronauts. From February 2020 to March 2021, the four astronauts received training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Russia.
During a visit to Delhi in 2023, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced that the agency will also train an Indian astronaut for a mission to the International Space Station by the end of 2024. At the time, The Indian Express reported that the selection would probably come from the four candidates who are getting ready for the Gaganyaan mission. With the Gaganyaan mission, India will showcase its human spaceflight capabilities by sending astronauts into a three-day orbit 400 kilometers above Earth. Following that, a safe landing in Indian Ocean waters will bring them back to Earth.
