Gaganyaan: India’s First Uncrewed Spaceflight Mission Expected This Month

Over the next three weeks, India is targeting to send its first uncrewed or experimental mission as part of Gaganyaan – which envisages a demonstration of ISRO’s human spaceflight capability – while a crewed spaceflight mission is targeted for October-December of 2026, the Rajya Sabha was informed on Thursday.

In Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh said that the first uncrewed or experimental mission was expected by the end of 2024. Further, further two uncrewed missions were targeted for Q3 of 2025 and Q1 of 2026 respectively.

MoS Singh said in response to a question by Rajeev Shukla of the Congress that for the first uncrewed mission, solid and liquid Propulsion Stages of human-rated launch vehicles were ready for flight integration. "C32 Cryogenic stage is nearing completion. Crew Module and Service Module structure realisation completed. Flight integration activities are in progress," he said.

The MoS identified the shortage of semiconductor components as one of the major challenges associated with the project.

"Major challenges and risks are related to the seamless supply of raw materials, semiconductor components and timely deliveries of hardware from industries," said MoS Singh.

Sharing the details of steps taken to counter the challenges, the MoS said, "Multiple sources have been identified for the supply of critical elements for the mission. The criticalities with regards to the timely delivery of subsystems are monitored closely for the intervention of higher management."

He said the Gaganyaan Industry Meet was also organized to sensitize industries about the quality aspects required for human space missions and timely delivery of hardware.

Talking about the crew, he said two out of three semesters of the training program for Gaganyatris has been completed and Independent Training Simulator and Static Mockup Simulators have been realized.

MoS Singh while elaborating upon other planned human missions said that the government recently announced a new vision for the Space Programme wherein Bharatiya Antariksha Station by 2035 and Indian Moon Landing by 2040 have been visualized. These future missions for Bharatiya Antariksha Station and Indian Moon Landing are also human missions.