Angad Pratap Age, Caste, Wife, Family, Biography & More

Some Lesser Known Facts About Angad Pratap

• He was commissioned into the fighter stream of the Indian Air Force (IAF) in December 2004.

• He was promoted to Wing Commander in December 2017 and later to Group Captain.
  

  A photo of Angad Pratap taken when he was in the National Defence Academy (NDA)

• Additionally, he is a flying instructor and a test pilot with 2,000 hours of flying experience, having flown various aircraft including the Su-30 MKI, MiG-21, MiG-29, Jaguar, Hawk, Dornier, and An-32.

• In 2018, Angad Pratap became one of the 30 IAF pilots who were shortlisted for ISRO’s Gaganyaan mission.

• The Gaganyaan mission is India’s first crewed space mission, which aims to send four astronauts into a low Earth orbit for three days and safely return them by landing in the Indian Ocean.

• The 30 IAF pilots underwent a tough selection process. By mid-2019, only 12 pilots out of the 30 remained in the race to become astronauts.

• Finally, four IAF pilots, Group Captains Angad Pratap, Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair, Ajit Krishnan, and Wing Commander Shubhanshu Shukla were selected to become ISRO’s first vyomnauts (a word derived from Sanskrit for astronauts).
  

  From left to right – Ajit Krishnan, Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair, S. Somanath, Angad Prathap, and Shubhanshu Shukla

• The initial training of the selected team to become astronauts was done at the Bengaluru-based Institute of Aerospace Medicine (IAM).

• Then, they went to Russia, where the team received advanced training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. Interestingly, India’s first astronaut, Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma, received training at the same centre in 1984.

• After training in Russia for 13 months, the team came back to India.

• They underwent additional training and evaluation process at the Human Space Flight Centre in Bengaluru.

• The training of the crew members ended in February 2024.

• On 27 February 2024, Prime Minister Narendra Modi awarded astronaut wings to the crew members for the Gaganyaan Mission.
  

  Prime Minister Narendra Modi felicitating Group Captain Angad Pratap after bestowing the prestigious astronaut wings on him at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram on 27 February 2024