India tests parachutes for 1st-ever human spaceflight mission in 2027 (photos)

India continues to refine the hardware and recovery procedures for its Gaganyaan human spaceflight program.

The latest exercise, called the Integrated Air Drop Test (IADT-01), was carried out at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on Aug. 24. A full-size mock-up of the Gaganyaan Crew Module — the capsule that will carry astronauts — was lifted by an Indian Air Force helicopter to a height of about 1.8 miles (3 kilometers) and then released, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said in a recent update.

"This test successfully demonstrated the objective of end-to-end performance validation of the critical parachute-based deceleration system of the Crew Module for Gaganyaan mission in one of the typical mission scenarios," the statement read.

During the test, the capsule deployed 10 parachutes in a carefully timed sequence, slowing safely for a water landing. The system performed as intended, reducing the capsule's speed to a safe level before splashdown, after which it was successfully recovered by the Indian Navy, according to the statement.

The exercise also simulated a launch pad abort scenario, confirming that the safety systems respond correctly under emergency conditions. ISRO said that additional tests are planned in the coming days to further verify the system's reliability.

This summer, Indian space minister Jitendra Singh noted that development of the Gaganyaan ground support hardware and launch vehicle is about 90% complete, with only the final phases of qualification remaining.

India now plans to send astronauts into space no earlier than 2027, following a series of delays that have shifted the original 2022 target, in part due to technical issues and also challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. The nation's historic first human spaceflight will be preceded by four uncrewed missions to test Gaganyaan's Human-rated Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (HLVM-3) rocket and ground infrastructure.

The first of these long-delayed uncrewed missions, known as G1, is expected to launch in December this year. It will carry a half-humanoid robot named Vyomitra (Sanskrit for "space friend") to collect data and validate technology, while also testing the crew and service modules, reentry procedures, and a safe splashdown in the Bay of Bengal.

The program recently added a fourth uncrewed test flight after the Indian government allocated an additional 111 billion rupees (about $1.32 billion US) to the program. If G1 proceeds as planned, the remaining uncrewed test flights will be completed by 2026, with G2 and G3 also scheduled for that year, according to ISRO.

Following these test flights, the first crewed mission, dubbed H1, is expected to launch in the first quarter of 2027. It will carry one or two astronauts to low Earth orbit, roughly 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the planet. Success would make India the fourth country to independently launch humans into space, after the Soviet Union/Russia,the United States and China.

India's astronauts, or Gaganyatris, for the H1 and H2 missions were selected in February 2024. They are Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair, Ajit Krishnan, Angad Pratap and Shubhanshu Shukla, all test pilots in the Indian Air Force.

Since their initial selection in 2019, the team has trained in Russia and the U.S., with Shukla recently flying to the International Space Station aboard the private Axiom-4 mission. The quartet has also enrolled in a Master's program at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru, where they are studying various aspects of the space program. Meanwhile, Krishnan has continued to log flying hours at his IAF base between ISRO commitments, according to reporting by ThePrint.

"No amount of training feels enough when it comes to representing your country in space, but what I realized is that there is always more than one way of doing something, and the more knowledge you gain, the better you become," Nair told ThePrint.