Almost five years after India first announced its human spaceflight programme – Gaganyaan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi revealed names of four astronauts who have been selected for the Indian Space Research Organisation’s ambitious mission.

The four astronaut-designates– Prashanth Nair, Angad Prathap, Ajit Krishnan, and Shubhanshu Shukla — are already undergoing training at the Astronaut Training Facility in Bengaluru for the country’s maiden human space flight mission.

The Prime Minister also reviewed the progress of the Gaganyaan mission at Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram and interacted with Vyomitra, a humanoid, that will be the first to launch on the Gaganyaan Mission before astronauts set foot in the crew capsule.

Here is the details of the Groups Captains!

• Group Captain Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair was born on August 26, 1976, in Thiruvazhiyad, Kerala. An alumnus of NDA and recipient of Sword of Honour at the Air Force Academy, Naid was commissioned on December 19, 1998, in the fighter stream of IAF. He is a Cat A Flying Instructor and a Test Pilot with approx 3000 hrs of flying experience. He has flown a variety of ac including Su-30 MKI, MiG-21, MiG-29, Hawk, Dornier, An-32, etc. He is also an alumnus of the United States Staff College and a DS at DSSC, Wellington and FIS, Tambaram. He has commanded a premier fighter Su-30 Sqn.

• Group Captain Ajit Krishnan was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu on April 19, 1982. He is an alumnus of NDA and recipient of President’s Gold Medal and Sword of Honour at the Air Force Academy. He was commissioned on 21 Jun 2003 in the fighter stream of IAF. He is a Flying Instructor and a Test Pilot with approx 2900 hrs of flying experience. He has flown a variety of ac including Su-30 MKI, MiG-21, MiG-21, Mig-29, Jaguar, Dornier, An-32 etc. He is also an alumnus of DSSC, Wellington.