In 1984, Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma flew aboard a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft to become India’s first human in space. It took forty years for a second Indian to reach orbit.

On 25 June 2025, Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla lifted off to the International Space Station aboard the commercial Axiom-4 mission, finally bridging that multi-decade gap and marking a fresh milestone for the national space program, Chetan Kumar of TOI reported.

A year after that flight, with India’s flagship Gaganyaan mission still lacking a firm date for its inaugural crewed launch, space planners are facing a critical strategic decision. The prevailing posture in New Delhi and Bangalore has been to exercise extreme patience.

The consensus favours perfecting the indigenous launch vehicle, conducting a flawless initial crewed flight, and only then considering broader human spaceflight goals. While cautious, this risk-averse approach is proving increasingly costly.

The International Space Station is swiftly approaching its final years of operation before its planned decommissioning around 2030. The facility holds decades of irreplaceable operational knowledge regarding long-duration human spaceflight.

Lessons in operating an orbital station, maintaining closed-loop life-support systems over several months, conducting complex rendezvous manoeuvres, carrying out repairs, and surviving critical system failures cannot simply be bought or recreated on demand once the station is deorbited.

India currently has a narrow, closing window to tap into this mature infrastructure through direct participation, yet it is choosing to remain on the sidelines.

The initial Gaganyaan flights will undoubtedly be a historic success, proving that India can independently build, integrate, and human-rate a complete spacecraft system. Achieving this capability puts India among a tiny group of spacefaring nations.

However, a short-duration mission measured in a few days or hours cannot offer the operational insights needed for India's long-term ambitions. The planned Bharatiya Antariksh Station, targeted for assembly in the early 2030s, along with crewed lunar landing goals set for 2040, require deep operational experience built over months.

Short missions fail to show how environmental control and life-support loops perform as filtration components age, how the human body adapts to ninety or more days of cumulative radiation, or how a crew manages real hardware breakdowns in microgravity.

This expertise is currently accessible on the International Space Station, where India holds a surprisingly strong foundation. India's designated astronaut corps includes test pilots who spent over a year undergoing rigorous instruction at Russia's Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre in Star City.

They achieved command-level proficiency on Soyuz systems, gained fluency in Russian, and mastered operational protocols that take years to internalize.

These astronauts are fully prepared to fly immediately. The missing component is not technical readiness, but an executive decision to commit them to a long-duration expedition of three to four months as flight engineers on a Soyuz mission. Allowing their specialised training to degrade while waiting for the native Gaganyaan schedule to solidify represents a wasted opportunity.

Another short commercial trip like Axiom-4 would be insufficient. While brief private flights provide visibility and initial microgravity exposure, they do not teach the skills required to run an orbital facility for an extended season. A full long-duration Soyuz assignment offers hands-on experience with Russian space-station management techniques perfected since the era of Salyut and Mir.

It includes manual docking experience—something automated crew vehicles rarely require of their occupants—and the chance to perform an extravehicular activity in an Orlan space suit. This spacewalk capability is an essential technical area where India currently has no real-world experience.

Every hour spent on such an expedition translates directly into critical data required for the construction of India's own orbital facility.

Pursuing this path does not conflict with true self-reliance. Seeking external operational experience is a standard practice among major spacefaring nations. The United States partnered with its Cold War rival during the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1975 when it served their national interests.

Booking an available seat while current astronaut training remains fresh provides a fast, cost-effective way to gain expertise that would otherwise take years of trial and error to develop independently.

Developments nearby highlight the urgency of the situation. China is rapidly expanding its space presence with the Tiangong space station. Running continuous crew rotations, Beijing is preparing to host its first foreign visitor—a Pakistani astronaut currently undergoing training in Beijing for an upcoming Shenzhou mission.

Even a brief visit gives Pakistan its first direct human spaceflight experience, while India deliberates on sending its second astronaut aboard domestic hardware.

China is actively assembling an international coalition around its orbital platform just as the International Space Station approaches its retirement.

India does not need to mirror China's strategy, but it cannot afford to stall while the world's primary multilateral space station runs out of operational lifetime.

Developing a domestic crewed vehicle will remain a major achievement, but a long-stay mission on the International Space Station would enhance that goal rather than overshadow it.

The life-support performance metrics, manual docking protocols, and collaborative engineering experience gained alongside international partners would feed directly into the engineering of the Bharatiya Antariksh Station, reducing risks for future Gaganyaan flights.

Waiting for domestic hardware to mature before seeking deep spaceflight experience is not prudent caution; it is letting a rare opportunity slip away.

The core question for Indian space policy is not a trade-off between national sovereignty and international partnership. It is a choice between using the remaining lifetime of the International Space Station or watching that priceless learning opportunity disappear forever.

Building space capability is often viewed as a simple step-by-step progression of hardware: developing the launch vehicle, launching the crew capsule, and then constructing the space station. Real human spaceflight, however, depends equally on human experience, practical instincts, and operational protocols refined through real-world challenges.

Self-reliance and international collaboration are not mutually exclusive; learning directly from those who have already established an orbital presence is the fastest way to achieve independent success in space.

Agencies