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Gaganyaan Is Only the Beginning of India’s Human Spaceflight Ambitions: Astronaut

India’s Gaganyaan programme should be viewed not as the culmination of the country’s human-spaceflight ambitions but as the foundational capability for a much larger programme spanning space-station operations, scientific research and eventual exploration beyond Earth, Group Captain Angad Pratap, Indian astronaut, said on Wednesday.

Speaking during a panel on the future of human spaceflight at the Bengaluru Space Expo 2026, Pratap said Gaganyaan would establish India’s ability to launch humans into space and return them safely using Indian spacecraft, systems and infrastructure.

The achievement would place India among the few countries to have independently demonstrated human spaceflight capability, he said.

“Gaganyaan is nothing but a human-spaceflight capability,” Pratap said. “It may sound like one single technology demonstrator—but that will lay the seed and foundation for much bigger things.”

The larger ambitions include the Bharatiya Antariksh Station, expanded scientific research in orbit and the eventual participation of scientists and specialists from multiple disciplines in missions beyond low Earth orbit.

Pratap said Gaganyaan should therefore be understood as one component of a broader effort to develop the technologies and human expertise needed for sustained activity beyond Earth.

Much of humanity’s scientific understanding has been built through observations and experiments conducted on Earth. To push that knowledge further, he said, scientists will increasingly need to conduct experiments in space and eventually on other celestial bodies.

“Gaganyaan may sound like one single capability,” Pratap said, “but we need to send scientists and humans of all specialisations all the way out there.”

Develop multiple technologies simultaneously

Pratap said India still has to develop and demonstrate several critical technologies required for a sustained human presence in space.

These include regenerative environmental control and life-support systems, spacesuits for extravehicular activity, spacecraft docking systems and other technologies required to construct and operate a space station.

The development of these capabilities cannot follow a strictly sequential path, he said.

India cannot first complete a crewed spacecraft, then begin work on a space station and only later start considering more ambitious exploration missions.

“We don’t have the luxury to say, ‘First I will make the space transportation vehicle, then I will go to the space station, then I will think about it,’” Pratap said.

“We have to think about all of them at once.”

The approach reflects the interconnected nature of India’s human-spaceflight roadmap.

While Gaganyaan is designed to demonstrate safe transportation of humans to and from orbit, the Bharatiya Antariksh Station will require technologies for long-duration habitation, scientific research, docking, resupply and regular crew operations.

Future lunar and deep-space missions would add another layer of complexity, requiring increasingly autonomous systems and technologies capable of supporting humans farther from Earth.

Future astronauts will need expertise beyond piloting

Pratap also said India’s future astronaut corps cannot be built exclusively around test pilots.

Test pilots will remain essential to the early human-spaceflight programme because of their experience in operating complex vehicles and responding to unexpected situations. But a sustained human presence in space will require specialists from a much wider range of disciplines.

Engineers, doctors, scientists, researchers and other professionals will eventually need to become part of the astronaut ecosystem.

An astronaut, he said, should possess exceptional expertise in one field while maintaining competence across engineering, operations, medicine and emergency response.

“The purpose of an astronaut has to be defined at the scale of humanity,” Pratap said.

“We need operators, pilots, engineers, doctors and every professional and his or her knowledge on board to make human spaceflight possible,” he added.

The shift would represent a broader evolution from astronauts primarily focused on operating spacecraft towards crews capable of conducting complex scientific and technological activities in space.

Pratap also addressed the possibility of spaceflight eventually becoming accessible to a wider section of society.

He said India’s human-spaceflight programme remains in a relatively early stage and that safety and system maturity must precede broader access.

Drawing on his experience as a fighter pilot, Pratap said it took him at least 600 hours of flying before he felt capable of managing every aspect of flight operations. He now has approximately 1,500 hours of experience.

“People cannot be put into space simply because they want to go,” he said.

Before human access can expand, candidates must be adequately prepared for an exceptionally demanding environment, while spacecraft systems must be sufficiently mature and their behaviour well understood.

Pratap said a second astronaut-selection process was nearing completion and included four vacancies for professionals who are not test pilots.

He said he hoped that half of those positions would be filled by women, reflecting the need to broaden the expertise and diversity of India’s future astronaut corps.

AI and robotics to augment astronauts

Artificial intelligence and robotics will also become increasingly important as human missions become more complex, Pratap said.

However, he cautioned against viewing AI and robotics as replacements for astronauts.

“AI and robotics are sometimes misunderstood as a replacement for humans, which is not the case,” he said.

“In operations, especially space operations, we need a collaborative functioning.”

The objective is to use AI and robotic systems to extend human capabilities, automate routine activities, simplify complex operations and assist astronauts in environments where tasks can be hazardous or technically demanding.

Pratap is involved in human-machine interface and cockpit design for Gaganyaan and the proposed Bharatiya Antariksh Station.

He said efforts were under way to integrate AI into the Gaganyaan cockpit as extensively as possible, subject to regulatory approvals and operational constraints.

The objective is not to remove humans from the decision-making loop, but to provide astronauts with better tools to understand situations, manage complex systems and respond to unexpected events.

Gaganyaan as the first step towards a larger human presence

Pratap’s remarks place Gaganyaan within a much broader trajectory for India’s human-spaceflight programme.

The immediate objective is to demonstrate that India can safely transport humans into orbit and return them to Earth. The longer-term ambition is to develop the infrastructure, technologies and expertise required for sustained human activity in space.

That trajectory runs from Gaganyaan to the Bharatiya Antariksh Station, from orbital research to lunar exploration and eventually towards deeper destinations.

For Pratap, the significance of Gaganyaan therefore lies not only in the mission itself, but in the capabilities it will unlock.

The programme is expected to create a foundation on which India can build a broader human-spaceflight ecosystem—one involving astronauts, scientists, engineers, industry, academia and international partners.

Gaganyaan, in that sense, is not the end of India’s human journey into space. It is the beginning.

By Subramanya Joshi