GAGANYAAN MISSION

 

GAGANYAAN MISSION

Gaganyaan mission is India's first manned space mission. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is aiming at a launch in 2024-2025.

Gaganyaan is an Indian crewed orbital spacecraft intended to be the formative spacecraft of the Indian Human Spaceflight Programme. The spacecraft is being designed to carry three people and a planned upgraded version will be equipped with rendezvous and docking capabilities. In its maiden crewed mission, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)'s largely autonomous 5.3-metric ton capsule will orbit the Earth at 400 km altitude for up to seven days with a two or three person crew on board. The first crewed mission was originally planned to be launched on ISRO's LVM3 rocket in December 2021.  As of October 2023, it is expected to be launched by 2025.

The first unmanned Gaganyaan-1 mission, a test flight to check the technology readiness for the final mission, is scheduled to take off by the end of 2024. The manned mission, which will fly a three-membered crew into a low earth orbit at an altitude of 400 km for a period of three days, is scheduled later.

With Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi bestowing the “astronaut wings” on four test pilots of the Indian Air Force, in reality they will be called "vyomanauts" rather than “astronauts” in tune with the naming tradition of space travellers in human space programmes of different countries.

Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi revealed the name of four astronauts who have been selected for the Gaganyaan Mission. The astronauts are undergoing training for the country's maiden human space flight mission. The four astronauts are - Prashanth Nair, Angad Prathap, Ajit Krishnan, and Shubhanshu Shukla.

2024 is going to be a year for Gaganyaan readiness, though it is targeted for 2025. It may be stated that the unmanned missions would help the agency understand its preparedness of various hardware, adding that ISRO would also conduct helicopter-based drop test to prove the parachute systems for the unmanned mission.