2024 will be an exciting year for India's Space  Exploration.

As Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is now gearing up for India’s maiden human spaceflight. The first of the unmanned missions under Gaganyaan would be launched early next year, said agency chief S Somanath.

“Gaganyaan work is progressing very well. We will launch the first Test Vehicle flight (TV-D1) of the Gaganyaan crew module to demonstrate the abort capability. It will be carried out very soon, most likely in October. Everything is getting ready for it. We will repeat it again, and by early next year we are planning the first unmanned mission," said the ISRO chairman.

The national space agency has planned as many as four test vehicle missions, TV-D1 and D2 in 2023, and D3 as well as D4 for 2024 to test technologies critical for the success of Gaganyaan. In addition, it has scheduled two un-crewed missions with robotic payloads – LVM3 G1 and LVM3 G2 — to demonstrate the human safety of the missions before it readies for the final flight.

The test flight this October will validate the crew escape system by demonstrating the abort capability. All the sub-systems pertaining to the test flight have been realized.

India plans to send three astronauts into the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) aboard its heaviest launcher LVM Mk3. The mission will consist of a crew module which will act as living quarters for the astronauts. The target is to position the module ~400 km circular orbit around earth for 1 to 3 days and bring it safely back to Earth.

Gaganyaan is India’s first-ever attempt at a human spaceflight programme. The training of astronauts selected for the ambitious space mission is also nearing completion.