Gaganyaan (Sanskrit for "sky craft") is the first crewed spacecraft of the Indian Human Spaceflight Programme — ISRO's mission to carry Indian astronauts, called gaganyatris, to low Earth orbit and bring them safely home.
Gaganyaan's goal is to demonstrate that India can launch humans to a ~400 km low Earth orbit, keep them safe and productive for up to seven days, and return them to a precise splashdown in Indian waters.
Formally announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day address on 15 August 2018 and approved by the Union Cabinet that December, the programme builds on decades of ISRO launch experience. In September 2024 the Cabinet expanded its scope — adding more flights and the first module of an Indian space station — and raised the total budget to about ₹20,193 crore (roughly US$2.1 billion).
Demonstrate indigenous human spaceflight capability — a human-rated rocket, a crewed capsule, life support, and safe recovery.
Conduct microgravity experiments in orbit and build the operational experience needed for a sustained Indian presence in space.
A human-rated LVM3 rocket — the HLVM3 — lifts the 8.2-tonne orbital module (crew module + service module) from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota. The service module's engines circularize the orbit at about 400 km, where the crew lives and works for up to a week.
To return, the service module performs a deorbit burn and separates. The crew module re-enters the atmosphere behind its heat shield, then deploys a sequence of ten parachutes to slow from re-entry speeds to a gentle splashdown at sea, where the Indian Navy leads recovery.
Before any crew flies, ISRO is flying an escalating series of tests: abort demonstrations (like the successful TV-D1 in October 2023), parachute airdrop tests, sea-recovery trials, and full uncrewed orbital flights of the complete spacecraft — the first of them carrying Vyommitra, a half-humanoid robot that monitors the cabin in place of a human.
As of mid-2026, over 8,000 ground tests are complete, the astronaut-designates are trained, and hardware for the first uncrewed flight (Gaganyaan-1) is in final integration.
Three uncrewed orbital flights are planned before the first crewed mission. Timelines have shifted as ISRO prioritizes crew safety — the first uncrewed flight has been targeted for 2026, with the crewed flight expected around 2027–2028. In the meantime, gaganyatri Shubhanshu Shukla flew to the International Space Station on Axiom Mission 4 in June–July 2025, giving India invaluable, real human spaceflight experience ahead of Gaganyaan. Check the live news page for the latest schedule updates.
Gaganyaan is the opening chapter of a much larger story. The expanded Indian Human Spaceflight Programme includes follow-on crewed flights, docking experiments, and the Bharatiya Antariksh Station (BAS) — an Indian space station whose first module is targeted for 2028, with completion by 2035. India's stated long-term goal: an Indian astronaut on the Moon by 2040, building on the robotic groundwork of the Chandrayaan Moon missions — and on the deep-space experience of Mangalyaan, which reached Mars in 2014 on India's first attempt.