Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair

Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair (born August 26, 1976, Thiruvazhiyad, Kerala, India) is one of the four astronauts selected for India’s Gaganyaan crewed space mission to low Earth orbit, planned for 2025. A test and fighter pilot of group captain rank in the Indian Air Force (IAF), Nair is also one of the astronauts selected for the Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4) to the International Space Station (ISS), along with Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla. Shukla will be the primary mission pilot for Ax-4, and Nair will be his backup.

Early childhood, education, and IAF career

The second of four siblings, Nair was born to Vilambil Balakrishnan Nair, an engineer, and Poolangattu Prameela, a homemaker. He spent his early years in Kuwait, where his father worked.

Nair has said that witnessing the beginnings of the Gulf War from the terrace of his home in Kuwait was a defining moment in his adolescence. Nair described his experience at an event in Ernakulam, Kerala, in May 2024:

A small boy was playing on top of the terrace in a desert land when he heard the rumble…initially he saw a tank…he [then] heard something even bigger, like thunder. He didn’t know it then, but when he looked to his left and up, he saw a fighter jet. It was a MiG 21, the date was 2nd August, 1990, and Iraq was invading Kuwait, and that little boy was me…and when the fighter jet crossed above, I got a faint glint of the helmet of the fighter pilot, and I thought: “That must be God!”

He described the experience of escaping the war in Kuwait through Iraq and Jordan and finally landing in Mumbai as one that gave him the “feeling of being whole, back in Bharat Mata [Mother India].” Nair’s family moved back to Kerala, their native state in India. Nair enrolled in the Chinmaya Vidyalaya school, Pallavur, when he was in ninth grade and went on to excel in academics.

While he was in engineering college, Nair passed the National Defence Academy (NDA) entrance exam. After his initial training at NDA, he joined the Air Force Academy and graduated with the coveted Sword of Honour, which is awarded to the best-performing cadet. He was commissioned into the fighter stream of the IAF in December 1998. In 2013–14 Nair graduated at the top of the International Officers class from the U.S. Air Command and Staff College (ACSC) in Montgomery, Alabama. Nair also trained at the Flying Instructors’ School, Tambaram, India.

A Category-A flying instructor, as of 2024, Nair has about 3,000 hours of flying experience. He has expertise handling varied aircraft, such as the MiG-21, MiG-29, Hawk, Dornier, and Su-30 MKI and has commanded an Su-30 fighter squadron. He is pursuing a Master of Technology degree (research) in aeronautics from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc).

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2024 and beyond

For Nair, 2024 was an eventful year that began with his marriage and saw two key announcements about his selection as an astronaut.

Gaganyaan program

Modi revealed the names of the four Gaganyaan astronauts at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) near Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, on February 27. Modi presented Indian astronaut wings, the first in India’s history, to Nair along with three other IAF pilots: Ajit Krishnan, Angad Pratap, and Shukla.

The ambitious Gaganyaan project, India’s first crewed mission, aims to demonstrate India’s human spaceflight capability by launching three astronauts to a low Earth orbit of 400 km (249 miles) for three days. With this mission, India would become the fourth country to launch its own crewed spacecraft, after the Soviet Union, the United States, and China. The crewed flight will be launched after the safety and reliability of the space modules is tested through uncrewed flights, the first of which is scheduled for December 2024.