Jahnavi Dangeti | 26 Jun 2025

Why in News?

Jahnavi Dangeti, a 23-year-old from Palakollu, West Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh, has been selected as an Astronaut Candidate (ASCAN) for the 2029 space mission of Titan Space Industries (TSI), a U.S.-based private space research agency.

An Astronaut Candidate (ASCAN) is an individual who has been selected by a space agency or organization for astronaut training, with the goal of qualifying them for spaceflight missions.

Key Points

About Jahnavi Dangeti

  • She completed her schooling in Godavari district, then pursued a Bachelor's in Electronics and Communication Engineering at Lovely Professional University (LPU) in Punjab, while her parents, Padmasri and Srinivas, reside in Kuwait.
  • She became the youngest foreign Analog Astronaut and the first Indian at the Analog Astronaut Training Centre (AATC) in Kraków, Poland, in 2022.
  • She has worked with the International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC), sponsored by NASA, and contributed to asteroid discovery using the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii.
  • Jahnavi has received multiple awards, including the People’s Choice Award at the NASA Space Apps Challenge and the Young Achiever Award at ISRO's World Space Week celebrations.
  • Union Minister of Civil Aviation congratulated her for becoming the first Indian to complete NASA’s International Air & Space Programme, marking her achievement as a proud moment for India.

Jahnavi_Dangeti

About Titans Space Mission

  • The mission, set for 2029, will be led by Colonel (Retd.) William McArthur Jr., a veteran NASA astronaut. 
  • The US-based mission will take around five hours, during which time the crew will fly around the planet twice, experiencing two sunrises and two sunsets. 
  • The mission will yield close to three hours of continuous zero gravity, providing a revolutionary environment for scientific investigation and human spaceflight development.
  • Jahnavi will begin astronaut training in 2026, which will include flight simulations, spacecraft procedures, survival training, and medical and psychological evaluations.

Other Key Indian Space Milestones:

  • Axiom-4 (Ax-4) Mission (2025): Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla became the second Indian to travel to space and will be the first to visit NASA's International Space Station (ISS).
    • The four-member crew(Peggy Whitson of the US, Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski from Poland, and Tibor Kapu from Hungary)  will carry out 60 scientific experiments, including seven contributed by India.
    • ISRO's experiments aim to enhance our understanding of space, its biological effects, and microgravity, with one key experiment examining the impact of spaceflight on six types of crop seeds.
  • Russian Soyuz Mission (1984): Rakesh Sharma became the first Indian to fly to space, marking a historic milestone for India’s space journey.