Astronaut Wings Awarded to IAF Pilots for Gaganyaan

Six years after announcing the decision to send Indians into space, Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled the four selected astronauts-designate who had been undergoing training in anonymity for the past four years.

The chosen candidates, Group Captains Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair (47), Angad Pratap (41), Ajit Krishnan (41), and Wing Commander Shubhanshu Shukla (38), all officers of the Indian Air Force, are set to follow in the footsteps of Rakesh Sharma, the first and only Indian to have traveled to space in 1984 aboard a Russian spacecraft. (Two Indian-Americans, Kalpana Chawla and Sunita Williams, have also been to space on NASA missions.)

One of the four IAF pilots is likely to participate in a NASA mission to the International Space Station later this year, following an agreement between the space agencies of India and the United States last year. The others are slated to be part of the Gaganyaan mission, India's inaugural manned space flight scheduled for next year. Although the space capsule for Gaganyaan can accommodate three astronauts, it has not been finalized whether two or three astronauts will be sent on the mission.

As of now, only the United States, Russia, and China have conducted human spaceflights, with over 600 astronauts from nearly 50 countries, including over 70 women, having ventured into space. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) began planning for a human spaceflight mission in 2004, but substantial progress was made only after the success of the Chandrayaan and Mangalyaan missions and the development of the GSLV rocket over the past decade.

Originally scheduled for a 2022 launch to coincide with India's 75th independence anniversary, the Gaganyaan mission faced delays due to the Covid pandemic.