Gaganyaan (Sanskrit for "sky vehicle") is ISRO's human spaceflight programme: an Indian capsule on an Indian rocket carrying up to three astronauts to a 400 km orbit and back. Approved in 2018, it has been built test by test — re-entry capsules, abort tests, parachute drops — towards the uncrewed G1 flight, targeted for late 2026, and a crewed flight in 2027.
Every test and decision that got Gaganyaan to the launch pad — 28 moments, and the flights are still ahead.
28 milestones from 2007 to 2040: 12 successes, 0 failures, 1 partial successes and 15 other milestones.
Before ISRO could fly people it had to prove it could bring something back from orbit in one piece. Every satellite before 2007 was a one-way trip.
10 Jan 2007 · PSLV · Success · First Indian re-entry
The 550 kg Space Capsule Recovery Experiment rode PSLV-C7 to orbit, circled Earth for 12 days, then fired its retro-rocket, survived re-entry behind a heat shield and splashed down in the Bay of Bengal on 22 January 2007, where it was recovered.
It was India's first test of the four things every crew capsule needs: a heat shield, a controlled de-orbit, parachutes and sea recovery.
2007–2009 · Milestone
ISRO began pre-project studies for a crewed orbital vehicle in 2007, and in February 2009 the government cleared the human spaceflight programme in principle — but without full funding. Work continued for a decade on critical technologies: the crew module shape, life support, the crew escape system and a human-rated launcher.
18 Dec 2014 · LVM3 · Success · Gaganyaan capsule shape flies
The first, sub-orbital test flight of LVM3 (then GSLV Mk III) carried a 3.7-tonne Crew Module Atmospheric Re-entry Experiment. It separated at about 126 km, re-entered, deployed its parachutes and splashed down in the Bay of Bengal near the Andaman and Nicobar Islands about 20 minutes after liftoff, where the Coast Guard recovered it.
CARE proved the capsule's shape, heat shield and parachute sequence at real re-entry speeds — the design that became the Gaganyaan crew module.
In 2018 the programme got a name, a deadline and a budget in the space of six months.
5 Jul 2018 · Success
At Sriharikota, the crew escape system's motors fired from the ground and carried a 12.6-tonne simulated crew module to about 2.7 km in a flight lasting 259 seconds. It then came down on its parachutes into the sea about 2.9 km away.
It showed that a crew sitting on a rocket that fails on the pad could be pulled clear and land safely.
15 Aug 2018 · Milestone · Programme named
Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced from the Red Fort that an Indian would fly to space on an Indian spacecraft — Gaganyaan — by 2022, the 75th year of independence.
28 Dec 2018 · Milestone
The Union Cabinet approved the Gaganyaan programme at about ₹9,023 crore: two uncrewed flights followed by a crewed flight of up to seven days for two to three astronauts.
January 2019 · Milestone
ISRO created the Human Space Flight Centre (HSFC) in Bengaluru to run Gaganyaan — crew training, life support, the crew module and mission operations.
2019 · Milestone
The IAF's Institute of Aerospace Medicine in Bengaluru screened test pilots for the astronaut corps. Four were chosen. In June 2019 ISRO signed a contract with Russia's Glavkosmos to help with selection, medical checks and training.
The plan was an uncrewed flight in December 2020. COVID-19 stopped factories, tests and training, and the human-rating work turned out to be bigger than expected.
22 Jan 2020 · Milestone
ISRO showed off Vyommitra, a half-humanoid robot — head, torso and arms — built to ride in the crew seat on uncrewed flights, operate panels and report on cabin conditions.
Feb 2020 – Mar 2021 · Milestone
The four pilots trained at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center near Moscow, where Rakesh Sharma trained in the 1980s. The course covered spacecraft systems, weightlessness flights, centrifuge runs and survival after landing in forest, marsh and water. COVID-19 paused it in 2020; it ended in March 2021.
2020–2021 · Delay
With work stopped across ISRO's centres and suppliers, the first uncrewed flight slipped from December 2020 to 2021 and then further. The 2022 crewed goal was dropped.
13 May 2022 · Success
ISRO fired the first human-rated S200 solid booster for its full duration at Sriharikota. Each of HLVM3's stages — the two HS200 boosters, the L110 core and the C32 cryogenic stage — had to be re-qualified with larger safety margins.
The first Gaganyaan hardware to fly was not the spacecraft but its lifeboat: the crew escape system, tested at the moment of highest stress on the way up.
21 Oct 2023 · Success · First Gaganyaan flight
A new single-stage Test Vehicle carried a crew module and its escape system. The first attempt stopped on the pad five seconds before liftoff over an engine ignition issue; ISRO fixed it and launched at 10:00 am the same day. At about 12 km, just past the speed of sound, the escape system fired and pulled the crew module away; the module separated from it at about 17 km, deployed its parachutes and splashed down in the Bay of Bengal about 10 km off Sriharikota. The Indian Navy recovered it.
The whole flight took under ten minutes — and proved a crew could survive a rocket failure during ascent.
February 2024 · Success
The CE20 engine of the C32 upper stage completed its final human-rating ground tests, the last big propulsion qualification before the rocket for G1 could be stacked.
27 Feb 2024 · Milestone · Crew revealed
At the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram, Prime Minister Modi named the astronaut-designates: Group Captains Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair, Ajit Krishnan, Angad Pratap and Wing Commander (now Group Captain) Shubhanshu Shukla, and pinned on their astronaut wings.
18 Sep 2024 · Milestone
The Cabinet expanded Gaganyaan to include the first module of the Bharatiya Antariksh Station (BAS-1) and an extra uncrewed flight, adding ₹11,170 crore for a total of ₹20,193 crore. Eight missions are planned through BAS-1 in 2028. The government's longer goals: an operational Indian space station by 2035 and an Indian on the Moon by 2040.
While the Gaganyaan capsule was being built, one of its astronauts went to orbit another way — and came back with experience no Indian had gained since 1984.
21 Jan 2025 · Success
ISRO's Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre integrated the propulsion system into the G1 crew module and shipped it to the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre for avionics and wiring.
25 Jun – 15 Jul 2025 · Falcon 9 · Success · First Indian on the ISS
Shukla flew as pilot of the commercial Axiom-4 mission on a SpaceX Crew Dragon, docking with the ISS on 26 June and splashing down off California on 15 July. He was the second Indian in space, 41 years after Rakesh Sharma, and the first aboard the International Space Station. Prasanth Nair trained as his backup.
ISRO paid for the seat to give Gaganyaan's team real operational experience — launch, life on a station, experiments, re-entry and recovery.
24 Aug 2025 · Success
An IAF Chinook lifted a simulated crew module and released it over the sea off Sriharikota. All ten parachutes — two apex-cover, two drogue, three pilot and three main — deployed in sequence, and the module splashed down for recovery. ISRO, the IAF, DRDO, the Navy and the Coast Guard ran it together.
2026 is the year of final checks: every system that has to work on the first orbital flight, qualified one more time on the ground or in the air.
10 Apr 2026 · Success
A 5.7-tonne simulated crew module was dropped from about 3 km by an IAF Chinook off Sriharikota. Ten parachutes of four types deployed and the Indian Navy recovered the module.
28 Apr 2026 · Milestone
Integration of the Vyommitra robot into the G1 crew module began. Alongside it G1 carries an engineering model of the life-support system and a fruit-fly biology experiment.
7 Jul 2026 · Success
The Integrated Main Parachute Air Drop Test at the ADRDE drop zone in Sheopur, Madhya Pradesh, released a dummy mass from about 2.5 km to qualify the main parachutes for G1. In the same month ISRO completed up-righting-system, umbilical-separation and apex-cover separation tests and a ground firing of the SOLVE test-vehicle motor.
October 2026 · Success
ISRO completed separation tests of the G1 orbital module, validating the sequence by which the crew module leaves the service module before re-entry.
These are official targets, not dates. Each flight goes only when the one before it says it is safe.
Q4 2026 · target · HLVM3 · Planned
HLVM3 puts the orbital module, with Vyommitra aboard, into a roughly 170 × 408 km orbit. The spacecraft circularises its orbit, tests life support, then fires to de-orbit; the crew module re-enters, deploys ten parachutes and splashes down for Navy recovery.
2027 · target · HLVM3 · Planned
Two more uncrewed flights repeat and extend G1's tests before the crew is cleared to fly.
2027 · target · HLVM3 · Planned · India's first astronauts
Up to three Indian astronauts in a roughly 400 km orbit for up to three days, then a splashdown in Indian waters — making India the fourth country to fly humans on its own rocket.
2028 · target · Planned
The first module of the Bharatiya Antariksh Station, approved in 2024, is targeted for launch by 2028.
2035 & 2040 · goals · Goal
The government's stated goals: a fully operational Bharatiya Antariksh Station by 2035 and an Indian astronaut on the Moon by 2040. Gaganyaan is the first step to both.
Gaganyaan is ISRO's human spaceflight programme. It aims to send up to three Indian astronauts to a roughly 400 km orbit for up to three days on an Indian rocket and spacecraft, and return them safely to a splashdown in Indian waters.
Gaganyaan is Sanskrit for "sky vehicle" or "sky craft" — from gagan (sky) and yaan (vehicle).
The Cabinet approved about ₹9,023 crore in December 2018. In September 2024 it raised the total to ₹20,193 crore to add the first module of the Bharatiya Antariksh Station and an additional uncrewed flight.
Group Captains Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair, Ajit Krishnan, Angad Pratap and Shubhanshu Shukla, all Indian Air Force test pilots, named on 27 February 2024 at VSSC, Thiruvananthapuram.
Test Vehicle Demonstration-1, flown on 21 October 2023 from Sriharikota. It fired Gaganyaan's crew escape system during ascent, pulling a crew module clear of the rocket; the module parachuted into the Bay of Bengal and was recovered by the Navy. It was the first Gaganyaan flight test.
A test in which a helicopter drops a simulated crew module so its full parachute sequence — ten parachutes of four types — can be checked in real conditions. IADT-01 was on 24 August 2025 and IADT-02 on 10 April 2026, both off Sriharikota.
Yes. He is one of the four Gaganyaan astronaut-designates. In 2025 he flew to the ISS on the Axiom-4 mission — a seat ISRO bought to give the Gaganyaan team operational experience.
Rakesh Sharma, who flew on the Soviet Soyuz T-11 on 3 April 1984 and spent about eight days on the Salyut 7 station. Gaganyaan will be the first time Indians fly on an Indian spacecraft.
India's planned space station. Its first module, BAS-1, was approved in September 2024 as part of the expanded Gaganyaan programme and is targeted for 2028, with the full station operational by 2035.
Related: Gaganyaan Tracker, LVM3, ISS Tracker, ISRO Missions Timeline, Chandrayaan-1, Mangalyaan.