India's Gaganyaan Mission- the first manned mission of the country has been much in talks, and the names of the prospective astronauts have been a matter of suspense and secrecy.

Now, TOI said the four astronauts selected for this auspicious mission, are all either wing commanders or group captains. These are Prashanth Nair, Angad Prathap, Ajit Krishnan and Chauhan.

All four, who have been training at the astronaut training facility in Bengaluru, will be at Isro's Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday, where PM Modi will introduce them to the world. TOI was the first to report in July 2019 that all astronauts-select for Gaganyaan would be test pilots, given that it was India's first spaceflight mission. Due to their specialisations, test pilots are usually called upon to study all that can go wrong in something that hasn't been tried before.

From scores of test pilots who enrolled to become astronauts, 12 made it past the first level of selection completed in Sept 2019 in Bengaluru. The selection was done at the Institute of Aerospace Medicine (IAM), which comes under Indian Air Force (IAF). After multiple rounds of selection, IAM and Isro shortlisted the final four. By early 2020, Isro sent the four men to Russia for initial training, which after some delay induced by Covid-19, was completed in 2021.

Since then, the four have been undergoing training by multiple agencies, including the armed forces. Isro has been working on equipping its Human Space Flight Centre (HSFC) with various simulators for the training. They continue with their regular flying with IAF to remain fit.