The Bharatiya Antariksh Station is India's planned five-module space station in low Earth orbit; its first module is due by 2028 and the full station by 2035.
On 18 September 2024 the Union Cabinet approved building the first module of the Bharatiya Antariksh Station (BAS-1) by widening the Gaganyaan human spaceflight programme. ISRO has worked out a design with five modules in low Earth orbit. The government's space vision aims for an operational station by 2035 and an Indian crewed mission to the Moon by 2040.
The Cabinet decision set eight missions to be completed by December 2028, ending with the launch of BAS-1. Four are under the existing Gaganyaan programme. The other four test technologies for building and running the station.
The decision added ₹11,170 crore, raising the total for the expanded Gaganyaan programme to ₹20,193 crore. In August 2026 the government told the Lok Sabha that system engineering of the BAS-01 module and work on its subsystems was progressing at ISRO centres.
Gaganyaan aims to send up to three Indian astronauts to a 400 km orbit for up to three days and bring them home. By August 2026 its first test flight of the crew escape system (TV-D1) and two air-drop tests of the crew module's deceleration system were complete. The first uncrewed orbital mission, carrying the half-humanoid robot Vyommitra, was targeted for the last quarter of 2026. Two more uncrewed flights and the first crewed flight were targeted by 2027.
India also gained station experience abroad. Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla flew to the International Space Station on 25 June 2025 as pilot of the Axiom-4 mission. He spent 18 days on board, ran experiments from Indian institutions, and returned on 15 July 2025, the first Indian astronaut to visit the ISS.
ISRO is not doing this alone. The European Space Agency is helping with ground network support, Australia with crew recovery, and France's CNES has trained ISRO's flight surgeons. An agreement with Russia's Roscosmos supplied crew seats, viewports and flight suits and trained the first group of Gaganyatris.
Worked example: a spacecraft at 400 km goes round Earth in about 92.6 minutes. That is 1,440 ÷ 92.6 ≈ 15.5 orbits a day, so a station crew would see about 15 sunrises every day.
Time how long the ISS takes to come back over India's longitude band: a station in low Earth orbit, like the planned BAS, laps the planet in about an hour and a half. Watch the ISS go round
Orbit at 400 km. Radius r = 6,378 + 400 = 6,778 km. Circular orbital speed v = √(GM/r) = √(398,600 / 6,778) = √58.8 ≈ 7.67 km/s, about 27,600 km/h.
Period T = 2π √(r³/GM). r³ = 6,778³ ≈ 3.114 × 10¹¹ km³. Divide by 398,600: 7.81 × 10⁵ s². Square root: 884 s. Multiply by 2π: 5,554 s ≈ 92.6 minutes.
Why stations need re-boosts. At 400 km there is still a trace of atmosphere. It slows a large structure a little on every orbit, so a station's orbit slowly decays unless engines push it back up. That is why station planning includes propulsion and resupply, not just living space. See orbital decay.
The budget in simple terms. ₹20,193 crore over eight missions is a simple average of about ₹2,524 crore per mission. The real split is uneven, because the total also pays for the BAS-1 module, the human-rated LVM3 (HLVM3), ground facilities and training.
What is already built. By August 2026 the government reported that all propulsion stages of the human-rated LVM3 had been developed and ground-tested, that five types of crew escape motors had been static-tested, and that a crew training facility, Gaganyaan control centre and second-launch-pad changes were ready.
BAS-1 is to be launched by December 2028, as the eighth mission of the expanded Gaganyaan programme. The full station is targeted to be operational by 2035.
ISRO's planned configuration has five modules.
Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, mission pilot of Axiom-4, who spent 18 days on the ISS in June–July 2025.