Just months after a historic landing on the moon's South Pole, India hopes to become the fourth nation in history to launch a crewed expedition into space. On Tuesday, it unveiled four members of the crew for its inaugural 'Gaganyaan' space project.
The first mission of its sort for India, Gaganyaan is expected to cost around 90.23 billion Indian rupees ($1.1 billion). Over the course of the next year, a liveable space capsule will be sent into an orbit of 400 kilometers (250 miles) in the Indian Ocean.
At a space center in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday gave the four crew members, all air force officers, "astronaut wings" in their first public appearance following around six months of intense training. It was still unclear if the mission will include all four astronauts.
According to a government statement, the four officers are Shubhanshu Shukla, Ajit Krishnan, Angad Pratap, and Prashanth Balakrishnan Nair.
On social media platform X, Modi said that Ganganyaan is a historic achievement for India, coming 40 years after Rakesh Sharma, an air force officer, became the first Indian to journey to space - on a Soviet mission.
Modi addressed space scientists, saying, "Time is ours, countdown is ours, and so is the rocket."
The only other countries to have launched crewed space missions of their own are the US, Russia, and China. More than 30 different nations have sent astronauts into space on American or Russian space programs.
