Gaganyaan: 'Super excited' about upcoming G1 uncrewed test flight, says astronaut-designate Angad Pratap

Group Captain Angad Pratap, one of the four astronaut-designates for India's Gaganyaan human spaceflight programme, on Saturday (October 24, 2026) said he was "super excited" about the upcoming G1 uncrewed test flight planned for late 2026.

"It is a prototype machine, so fingers crossed there," he told reporters on the sidelines of the 39th National Convention of Aerospace Engineering organised by the Institution of Engineers (India) here. The Department of Space had announced in August that G1, the first uncrewed experimental mission to validate technologies being developed for the first time, is targeted for late 2026.

Aero and space

Mr. Pratap drew similarities with his work as a test pilot in the Indian Air Force (IAF) with that of an astronaut-in-training with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

"It is something similar in Gaganyaan. Low Earth Orbit (LEO) is similar, I would say. It is a mix and match in aerospace. So aero and space -- the hardware and protocols, the genealogy, I would say -- is very much similar. Of course, space has got different challenges, but whatever learning is there from the aero world can be very quickly adapted to space," he said.

"When we go deep into space, then it starts going away from that aero environment. But the moment you take human beings to the Moon and Mars, it is a different ball game and requires bigger and more complex technology which are not probably there in the aero world," Mr. Pratap added.

Mr. Pratap had recently been in the news for his MTech thesis which is on re-entry technologies. He said that he has submitted the thesis and that he is also integrating the mathematical model he had prepared for it back at the Human Space Flight Centre (HSFC).

International collaboration

Mr. Pratap also spoke about the importance of international collaboration in space exploration.

"It's not only the cost. The cost is related to the complexity. Space flight requires exotic materials and exotic technologies which cannot be developed overnight. In fact, you will find that the total engineering potential of the country will be used to make one technology," he observed. The West realised this and went on to repeat their military collaboration -- NATO -- in the science domain in the form of the International Space Station, he said.

He also pointed out that there was no comparison between modern-day astronauts and "a legend" such as Rakesh Sharma, who became India's first cosmonaut when he flew aboard the Soviet Soyuz T-11 in 1984. The amount of risk that Mr. Sharma, as a Cold War era cosmonaut, took was probably much more than what today's astronauts are taking, he observed.