On 27th February, India unveiled the inaugural crew for its maiden Gaganyaan space mission, marking a significant step towards becoming the fourth country globally to embark on a crewed space expedition. This development follows India’s historic moon landing at the south pole just months ago.

The Gaganyaan mission, translating to “sky craft” in Hindi, is a groundbreaking endeavor for India, with an estimated cost of 90.23 billion rupees ($1.5 billion Cdn). The mission involves launching a habitable space capsule within the next year to orbit 400 kilometers above Earth, with its return slated for a landing in the Indian Ocean.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi conferred “astronaut wings” upon the four crew members, all belonging to the air force, during a ceremony at a space center in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.

The four officers named in the government statement are Prashanth Balakrishnan Nair, Ajit Krishnan, Angad Pratap, and Shubhanshu Shukla. The astronauts are undergoing rigorous training, including medical, physical, and language training. The mission is set to launch between 2024-2025, with the crew having trained in Russia and now familiarizing themselves with the mission intricacies at ISRO.

Currently, only the United States, Russia, and China have successfully launched crewed missions into space.

In 2019, when the cabinet approved the initiative, the estimated expenditure was $1.09 billion. By 2024, this figure had indeed surpassed $1.21 billion. All components of the rocket, including the engine, crew capsule, and life system, are manufactured in India. The costs encompass technology development, flight hardware realization, and essential infrastructure elements, all built from scratch. According to experts in the field, as research and development progress, the required funding is expected to increase.

Comparing this to historical data, the Project Apollo initiative from 1960-1973 incurred an actual expenditure of $25.8 billion. Extrapolating this to 2020, the estimated equivalent would be around $257 billion.

The success of Gaganyaan could lead to further spaceflight experiments and India’s dream of establishing its own space station.