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Gaganyaan's first uncrewed flight is about two months away, says ISRO chief Narayanan

The G1 mission will carry the half-humanoid robot Vyommitra into low Earth orbit on the human-rated LVM3 rocket from Sriharikota, V Narayanan said in Chennai on Saturday.

From the editorial desk · ChennaiPublished
ISRO chairman V Narayanan (file photo)
ISRO chairman V Narayanan (file photo)Photo: Its.utpal14 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Key points

  1. ISRO chairman V Narayanan said the first Gaganyaan test flight will be conducted in about two months.
  2. The uncrewed G1 mission will carry the half-humanoid robot Vyommitra into low Earth orbit.
  3. It will fly on the HLVM3, the human-rated version of ISRO's heaviest rocket, from Sriharikota.

The first uncrewed test flight of Gaganyaan, India’s human spaceflight programme, will take place in about two months, ISRO chairman V Narayanan said on Saturday.

Speaking to reporters in Chennai after a graduation day event at the Sri Ramachandra Centre for Higher Education and Research (SRIHER), Narayanan said the mission, called G1, would lift off from the Sriharikota spaceport on the HLVM3, the human-rated version of ISRO’s heaviest rocket.

“G1 flight is an uncrewed test mission that will carry the half-humanoid robot Vyommitra into a low Earth orbit,” he said.

The remark is the clearest timeline ISRO has given for G1 in recent weeks. When the agency announced its latest ground tests on 16 October, it said only that the flight was targeted for 2026, with no date fixed.

Getting ready for G1

G1 is the first uncrewed Gaganyaan mission, a rehearsal before astronauts fly. Vyommitra will stand in for a crew inside the capsule.

Engineers at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram completed a series of tests this month simulating the moment the crew module separates from its service module before re-entry. ISRO said the capsule’s avionics and heat shields came through the pyrotechnic shock of separation intact.

Earlier in the year, the G1 crew module was dropped from an aircraft to test its parachute descent, and ISRO qualified the system that turns the capsule upright after splashdown. India’s first crewed flight is targeted for 2027.

Narayanan did not give an exact launch date on Saturday. ISRO’s next scheduled launch is the GSLV mission carrying the NVS-03 navigation satellite, set for 30 October.

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