Gaganyaan: India’s Next Space Odyssey

When Rakesh Sharma flew to space, along with two Russian cosmonauts onboard a Soyuz spacecraft in 1984, it seemed unlikely that another Indian would be following anytime soon. India’s space programme was still in relative infancy, and the whole mission of sending an Indian to space then seemed more an exercise in strengthening India-Soviet Union relations than pushing India’s capabilities in space exploration.

Even Sharma’s experiments and activities in space were modest in scope. One involved checking out yoga’s efficacy in countering the impact of space travel. (Sharma would perform yoga exercises daily in space.) And another was about taking detailed photographs of Indian areas as aids in down-to-earth pursuits like forestry, land-use mapping and general map-making. The New York Times, which covered the launch, reported, “India is not likely to have its own manned space program for a long time, if ever, and Mr Sharma’s flight may well be the last by an Indian for a long time.”

In comparison, when Shubhanshu Shukla took off to space today, forty one years after Sharma, the question was not if, but when, the next set of Indian astronauts would be following him. As is quite evident by now, Shukla’s flight is going to be the start of a new era in India’s space programme. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has already carried out a number of important missions that have placed the country in a very small group of countries with cutting-edge space capabilities. Now, it hopes to take the next leap by sending humans to space. If current estimates hold, ISRO will send its first crewed mission to space for a three day trip by 2027.

“There is nothing like having a hands-on experience,” says Dr R Umamaheswaran, Distinguished Scientist, former Scientific Secretary and former Director of the Human Space Flight Centre at ISRO. “No matter how much training you have undergone, and all sorts of simulations. There is no equivalent to actually travelling to space, to experience the liftoff to orbit.” According to Umamaheswaran, this experience will be invaluable to India’s own human space flight programme. “That knowledge and experience he brings back is going to be very important for our own own Gaganyaan programme,” he says.

Shukla is expected to be one of the three astronauts who will be part of the first Gaganyaan mission in 2027. Here, India is expected to send three astronauts into space, orbiting 400 km above Earth for three days before safely landing them in Indian waters. If and when this is accomplished, it would make India just the fourth country after the United States, Russia, and China to send humans to space. This mission in turn is part of an even more ambitious programme, one which will expand to establishing a space station called Bharatiya Antariksha Station (BAS), currently estimated by 2035, and landing humans on the moon by 2040.

Gaganyaan’s Origins

While the government announced the Gaganyaan mission in 2018, ISRO had been considering such a human spaceflight programme as way back as 2002. “It was around 2002 when an initial study team was first formed. We started with the feasibility part of things, from discussions on the kind of rocket launches, the crew modules, what should be the type of initial missions…. Based on the inputs, another study group was formed,” says Umamaheswaran, who was part of these early study groups. ISRO built on these step by step, until the government formally green-lit the Gaganyaan programme in 2018.

With Gaganyaan, although there was some help from foreign countries (Indian astronauts were trained for instance at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Russia, and the French space agency, Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, collaborated on the space medicine component of the mission), ISRO has had to develop the programme entirely from scratch, building its own rockets and capsules, and associated technologies. When the first study group was formed, India did not possess a launch vehicle powerful enough to undertake such a mission. This has now changed with the development of India’s first human-rated LVM3 (Launch Vehicle Mark-3).

International Partnerships

One aspect of Shukla’s journey to space via the Axiom Mission 4 launch is India’s growing closeness with the US when it comes to human spaceflight programmes. Shukla’s trip occurred after ISRO signed a space flight agreement with Axiom Space as part of a joint mission with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The US and India signed have also been signatories to iCET (initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology), now renamed TRUST (Transforming the Relationship Utilizing Strategic Technology), a National Security Advisor-led initiative since 2002, that among other things emphasises cooperation on human spaceflight, commercial lunar exploration, and commercial space partnerships. India also signed the Artemis Accords, a US-led international partnership on planetary exploration and research a couple of years ago.

“Human spaceflight cooperation was one of the key outcomes catalysed by iCET. Its first fruits are not just in Shukla’s flight to the ISS but in NASA providing advanced astronaut training to Shukla and [Prasanth] Nair [the astronaut put on standby], checking off milestones in our own Gaganyaan programme,” says Jatan Mehta, an independent space exploration writer who runs a website dedicated to space exploration. “In the long run, NASA and US companies are in turn interested in using Gaganyaan cargo modules in the post-ISS future where Russia isn’t involved.”

Some have speculated that being a part of the Accords could help build a strong NASA-ISRO collaboration, and that if and when prospecting resources on the Moon becomes a possibility, India would have a seat on that table.

Mehta however says that for such a thing to be a possibility, India would need more lunar missions. “For India to get a say on the critical topic of lunar resource prospecting, we need missions which provide ground truths about the nature of lunar soil at its poles, including its water forms and abundances,” he says, as he points to how ISRO is working in that direction through its upcoming Chandrayaan-4 (where it aims to bring lunar samples to the Earth) and Chandrayaan 5 (where it will be collaborating with Japan’s space agency to study water and water-ice resources on the moon, particularly in the polar regions) missions.

While India and the US’ cooperation in space exploration through bilateral agreements like the iCET (now named TRUST) might prove beneficial, there are some who argue that in the long run India will have to chart its own course and work on more iCET-like bilateral initiatives with other countries, while also making its domestic commercial space ecosystem more competitive. Chaitanya Giri, a Fellow with the Centre for Security, Strategy, and Technology at the Observer Research Foundation, points out that as India works on establishing its own space station BAS, it will have to look at forming commercial space partnerships with entities emerging from countries across geopolitical blocs.

“What’s going to happen in the next 10 to 15 years is you will have only three or four space stations in the lower orbit. There will be the Chinese space station, the International Space Station, if it is extended beyond 2030, one commercial one belonging to Axiom [Space], and one of India’s… When you have your own space station, you won’t keep it closed only for Indians. You may have the first few missions exclusively for Indians. But then thereafter you’ll have to open it up to international astronauts. You may open it up to Europeans, to Russians, to countries from the global south,” Giri says.

India currently has strategic space dialogues going on with countries like France and Japan, apart from a growing relationship with the US and old ties with Russia. Giri believes that over time there will be more partnerships with other countries. “We are in a position where we are seen as not Western but not anti-Western too. So that makes us really appealing for countries who do not want to take panga [get in trouble] with either the Sino or the American bloc,” he says.

Then there is also the element of competition built in. If and when the Gaganyaan Mission fructifies, it will be the demonstration of one more country out of only a handful that is capable of sending humans to space. Given its past record, it will also probably mean that ISRO will be able to send humans to space at a cost much lower than most other entities can offer.

When Umamaheswaran is asked why India needs to send humans to space, he often responds with a Dr Abdul Kalam quote. “As Dr Kalam used to say, ‘Only strength respects strength’.” According to him, if India is to be respected and have a voice globally, it should also be able to demonstrate its abilities. “If you look at the dynamics of space exploration today, where the leading space [exploration] countries like the US and China have serious thoughts about colonisation of the moon, going to Mars, etcetera. Unless you have the technology to send people there, to be at par with other competing countries, you will have no say in the matter,” he says.

Shukla is of course part of the first class of Indian astronauts who will travel to space. Three other astronauts, Prashanth Balakrishnan Nair, Ajit Krishnan and Angad Prathap, have so far been shortlisted. Over the next 10 to 15 years, as India’s Gaganyaan programme matures, experts believe there were be many more such classes of astronauts.

“Yes, Gaganyaan has taken its own time. You couldn’t have jumped steps. Everything had to happen in a step-wise manner,” Giri says. “And here you are. You have the technical bells and whistles; you have the human resource. And you have the ecosystem geared for it [the mission] too.”

It may have taken 41 years for an Indian to travel to space once again. But as the Gaganyaan Mission approaches, the wait for the next one after Shukla, and the ones after that, all of them flying on an indigenously developed space programme, will likely be infinitely shorter.

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