Scroll down to follow Gaganyaan's journey — from a bold idea to the launch pad. Milestones marked in green are planned and subject to change.
Rakesh Sharma flies to the Salyut 7 station aboard Soviet Soyuz T-11 — India's first taste of human spaceflight.
ISRO launches and recovers the SRE-1 capsule from orbit, proving re-entry, heat-shield and splashdown-recovery basics.
A boilerplate crew module rides an LVM3-X to 126 km, re-enters at high speed and parachutes into the Bay of Bengal.
The Crew Escape System yanks a test capsule from the launch pad to 2.75 km and a safe sea landing in 259 seconds.
PM Narendra Modi announces from the Red Fort that India will send its own astronauts to space. Cabinet approval and ₹10,000 crore follow in December.
Four IAF test pilots complete generic spaceflight training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre near Moscow.
The first Test Vehicle mission demonstrates the Crew Escape System in flight — the capsule separates, descends under parachutes and is recovered from the Bay of Bengal.
The four astronaut-designates are revealed to the world; the CE-20 cryogenic engine also earns its human-rating certification this month.
The Cabinet approves the Bharatiya Antariksh Station's first module and more flights, raising the Gaganyaan budget to ₹20,193 crore.
Gaganyatri Shubhanshu Shukla pilots Axiom Mission 4 and spends 18 days on the International Space Station — a first for India.
Integrated Air Drop Tests (Aug 2025 & Apr 2026) prove the full parachute system; sea-recovery and crew-egress trials wrap up; Vyommitra integration begins for the first orbital flight.
The complete spacecraft flies to orbit on the HLVM3 with the robot Vyommitra aboard — no humans, full dress rehearsal. Two more uncrewed flights (G2, G3) follow.
Gaganyatris orbit Earth at 400 km on an Indian rocket — making India the fourth nation to launch humans to space on its own.
The Bharatiya Antariksh Station is targeted for completion by 2035 — and an Indian on the Moon by 2040.