Inside India's Gaganyaan Training: What ISRO's Astronaut Candidates Are Learning in Russia and at Home

The four men India has chosen to fly to orbit have already spent time in Star City, outside Moscow, living inside the routines of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre. Group Captain Prashanth Balakrishnan Nair, Group Captain Ajit Krishnan, Group Captain Angad Pratap, and Wing Commander Shubhanshu Shukla, all Indian Air Force test pilots, began their training in Russia in 2020, the first Indian astronaut candidates to train abroad since Rakesh Sharma flew to the Salyut 7 space station in 1984.

At the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre, the curriculum is designed around the assumption that space will try to kill you in ways you haven't thought of yet. The four candidates have trained in Soyuz systems, not because Gaganyaan will use a Soyuz, but because the physics of orbital rendezvous, re-entry dynamics, and emergency procedures are the same regardless of the vehicle. They have undergone centrifuge runs that simulate the G-forces of launch and re-entry, isolation exercises that test psychological endurance, and water survival drills for post-splashdown recovery. The Gagarin Centre also runs hyperbaric chamber sessions and high-altitude low-oxygen training. Russian instructors carry decades of continuous crewed spaceflight experience, the Soviet and Russian programmes have maintained an unbroken chain of human orbital missions since 1961, and that institutional knowledge transfers in ways no textbook replicates.

Shubhanshu Shukla is also assigned to the AXIOM-4 commercial mission to the International Space Station, a flight that will give him actual orbital experience before Gaganyaan launches. That assignment is deliberate. ISRO gains real mission data from a crewed flight at no cost to the Gaganyaan timeline.

India's Human Space Flight Centre in Bengaluru is where the domestic half of the training runs. The HSFC manages mission simulation, crew systems familiarisation, and the integration of the astronauts with the actual hardware they will fly. The Gaganyaan crew module is designed to carry three cosmonauts, the Indian programme uses the term "vyomanauts", in a pressurised cabin for a three-day mission at approximately 400 kilometres altitude. The spacecraft launches on the LVM3 rocket, formerly known as GSLV Mk III, which has already demonstrated the payload capacity required for the crewed mission.

At Bengaluru, the candidates train in a full-scale crew module mockup, rehearsing every switch sequence, abort procedure, and post-landing protocol. Microgravity familiarisation happens through parabolic flight sorties. Suit donning, doffing, and pressure checks are drilled until the sequence is automatic. The HSFC also runs mission control simulation from the Indian side, so the ground team and the crew practise the same scenarios simultaneously.

The Gaganyaan orbital module consists of a crew module and a service module. The crew module is the pressurised section where the vyomanauts live and work; the service module carries propulsion, power, and life support systems for the orbital phase. Re-entry uses a blunt-body capsule design with a parachute and retro-rocket system for splashdown in the Bay of Bengal. ISRO has conducted uncrewed test flights to validate the Crew Escape System, the mechanism that pulls the capsule away from the rocket in the event of a launch abort. That system is non-negotiable: no crewed mission proceeds until it has been proven.

All four candidates are experienced test pilots, which means they already understand high-performance aircraft systems, emergency decision-making under stress, and the discipline of following a checklist when instinct says otherwise. Spaceflight training adds a layer that combat aviation does not require: the complete absence of any external help. A pilot in trouble over the Bay of Bengal can eject. A crew module at 400 kilometres altitude cannot call for assistance from anyone on the ground faster than the speed of radio waves. The training at both Star City and Bengaluru is designed to make the crew self-sufficient for every failure mode the engineers can model, and to build the judgment to handle the ones they cannot.

What the four men in Star City and Bengaluru are actually learning is not just how to operate a spacecraft. They are learning to carry the institutional memory of human spaceflight into India, the same way Rakesh Sharma brought it back from Salyut 7 in 1984, except this time the vehicle, the launch pad at Sriharikota, and the mission control room will all be Indian.