By BlueShift | 2025-12-04

India will launch the first of three uncrewed Gaganyaan ("Skycraft") orbital missions in early 2026 with a humanoid robot known as "Vyommitra" on board.

The unmanned missions will pave the way for a crewed mission slated for the first quarter of 2027, which is expected to be India's first human spaceflight and a new milestone for the country's spacefaring ambitions.

Indian citizens have travelled into space before -- astronauts Rakesh Sharma on the 1984 Soviet Soyuz T-11 mission, and Shubhanshu Shukla on the 2025 Axiom 4 (Ax‑4) mission to the International Space Station (ISS).

Several astronauts of Indian heritage also have travelled to space as the citizens of other countries, and India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced plans to send a man to the Moon by 2040.

But the crewed flight of the Gaganyaan 2027 mission will be the first time India sends an astronaut into space using a domestic rocket, the Launch Vehicle Mark 3 (LVM3), and in a domestically developed orbital vehicle.

Before a real human sets out on the crewed mission, Vyommitra -- a humanoid robot with the appearance of a woman that is constructed from an aluminum alloy to withstand high pressure and vibrations -- will go first.

Vyommitra means "space friend" in Sanskrit.

'Safety is crucial'

"Safety of astronauts in space is crucial," Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) chairman V Narayanan said in October, per the New Indian Express.

"Three uncrewed missions have to be accomplished before going for the crewed mission and we are working towards it," he said.

"In the first uncrewed mission, Vyommitra is going to fly and we are working towards that to accomplish the crewed mission by the beginning of 2027."

Narayanan said more than 8,000 tests have been conducted in preparation for the mission, Press Trust of India reported.

The ISRO's Gaganyaan mission aims to demonstrate India's indigenous capability to undertake human space flights, and to lay the foundation for sustained Indian human space exploration.

It comes with an estimated price tag of $1.08 billion, according to the ISRO.

"It represents India's rise as a global space power," India's Minister of Science and Technology and Minister of Earth Sciences Jitendra Singh said in June.

The crewed Gaganyaan mission plans to send a three-day manned mission into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and return the astronauts safely to Earth, with a soft landing in India's territorial waters.

ISRO completed the first integrated air drop test for Gaganyaan at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on August 24, per the New Indian Express.

This demonstrated the parachute-based deceleration system of the crew module in a simulated rehearsal of the splashdown when the astronauts return to Earth.

'Aspirations of 1.4 billion'

Four Indian Air Force test pilots have been designated as astronauts for the Gaganyaan mission: Ajit Krishnan, Prashanth Balakrishnan Nair, Angad Pratap and Shubhanshu Shukla.

Presenting "astronaut wings" to the four in February 2024, Modi said they were "carrying the aspirations of 1.4 billion Indians into space," AFP reported.

"The countdown of the rocket inspires thousands of children in India, and those making paper planes today dream of becoming scientists like you," he told them.

India's Department of Space reports that the astronauts' training has been progressing steadily.

"Four Indian Air Force pilots, selected as astronaut-designates, have completed training in Russia and are undergoing further mission-specific training in India," the department said in June.

India has flexed its spacefaring ambitions in the last decade with its space program growing considerably in size and momentum.

In August 2023, India became the fourth nation to land an unmanned craft on the moon after Russia, the United States and China. The following month, it launched a probe to observe the outermost layers of the Sun from solar orbit.