Gaganyaan-4 (fromSanskrit:gagana, "celestial" andyāna, "craft, vehicle") will be the first crewed test flight of theGaganyaan programme, with launch planned for 2026.
The mission is planned to demonstrate human spaceflight capability by sending a crew to an orbit of 400 km of altitude[1][2][3] for 7 days.[4] Reporting in January 2020 for theHindustan Times,[5] Anonna Dutt quotesK. Sivan, then chairman of ISRO, as saying,
We are designing the mission for three people to go to low earth orbit for seven days. However, whether we send two people or one person and whether they spend seven days in the orbit or one will be decided [after the] unmanned flights.
In October 2023, it was announced that the first crewed flight would take place after three uncrewed missions of thehuman-rated HLVM3.[6] The launch is planned for 2026[7] with the capsule coming down in the Indian Ocean.[8]
The Gaganyan programme astronauts,Prasanth Nair,Angad Pratap,Ajit Krishnan andShubhanshu Shukla, were announced on 27 February 2024.[11] Those selected for the first spaceflight will be from this pool of qualified astronauts, and one of them will fly to the ISS in 2024.[12] Is considered that one or two crewmembers will take part of this mission.[3]
Before theGaganyaan mission announcement in August 2018, human spaceflight was not a priority for ISRO, but it had been working on related technologies since 2007,[29] and it performed aCrew Module Atmospheric Re-entry Experiment[30] and aPad Abort Test for the mission.[31][32] In December 2018, the government approved a further₹100 billion (US$1.5 billion) for a 7-days crewed flight of 2–3 astronauts.[33][34][35][36]
If completed successfully, India will become the fourthnation to conduct independent human spaceflight after theSoviet Union, United States, and China. After conducting the first crewed spaceflights, the agency intends to start aspace station programme, crewedlunar landings, and crewed interplanetary missions in the long term.[37][38]
ISRO, the Department of Space and the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorization Center (IN-SPACe), together withVoyager Space, agreed to a memorandum of understanding to explore use of Gaganyaan for crew transportation to Voyager's plannedStarlab space station.[39]
Gaganyaan-5 (fromSanskrit:gagana, "celestial" andyāna, "craft, vehicle") will be the second crewed test flight of theGaganyaan programme, with launch planned in 2026.[40][41][42]
^ISRO changed the name of GSLV Mk3 to LVM3 after the successful launch of LVM3-M2 mission. The rename was done to remove any ambiguity on the ability of the vehicle to put payloads in a particular orbit.[16][15]
Prasanth Nair,ISRO
