Gaganyaan: India's first manned mission to space!
With massive success of Chandrayaan-3 moon mission and crossing off milestones for its Aditya-L1 sun explorer, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has yet again headed to another milestone mission to be achieved : Gaganyaan.
The Gaganyaan mission, which translates from Sanskrit to "celestial vehicle," will be India's attempt to launch at least three astronauts to low-Earth orbit before the end of 2024, though a concrete timeline for liftoff hasn't been shared yet.
Gaganyaan project consists of demonstration of human spaceflight capability by launching crew of 3 members to an orbit of 400 km for a 3 days mission and bring them back safely to earth, and lastly softlanding back to Indian sea waters.
With manufacturers of ISRO and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, a crew capacity of 3, and design life of 7 days, it has a launch mass of 8,200 kg (18,100 lb) including the service module.
The first development flight Test Vehicle (TV-D1) is in the final stages of preparation. The Test Vehicle is a single-stage liquid rocket developed for this abort mission. The payloads consist of the Crew Module (CM) and Crew Escape Systems (CES) with their fast-acting solid motors, along with CM fairing (CMF) and Interface Adapters.This flight will simulate the abort mission condition during the ascent trajectory where CES with CM will be separated from the Test Vehicle at an altitude of about 17 km continuing with deployment of the series of parachutes, finally culminating in the safe touchdown of CM in the sea, about 10 km from the coast of Sriharikota.
LVM3 rocket, the well proven and most reliable heavy lift launcher of ISRO, has identified as the launch vehicle for Gaganyaan mission. It consists of solid stage, liquid stage and cryogenic stage. Thus, all systems in LVM3 launch vehicle are re-configured to meet human rating requirements and christened to Human Rated LVM3. HLVM3 will be capable of launching the Orbital Module to an intended Low Earth Orbit of 400 km. Orbital Module (OM) that will be Orbiting Earth comprises of Crew Module (CM) and Service Module (SM). OM is equipped with state-of-the-art avionics systems with adequate redundancy considering human safety.
Various precursor missions are planned for demonstrating the Technology Preparedness Levels before carrying out the actual Human Space Flight mission. These demonstrator missions include Integrated Air Drop Test (IADT), Pad Abort Test (PAT) and Test Vehicle (TV) flights. Safety and reliability of all systems will be proven in unmanned missions preceding manned mission.
The Gaganyaan translating to "celestial vehicle" in Sanskrit, will be India's attempt to launch at least three astronauts to low-Earth orbit before the end of 2024, though a concrete timeline for liftoff hasn't been shared yet.
On Oct 21, ISRO will launch an empty module from Satish Dhawan Space Center in India before bringing it safely back to Earth, deputy minister for science and technology, Jitendra Singh, said on Tuesday (Oct. 11).
The test will also examine components such as parachutes for spacecraft stabilization during reentry. The crew module will be recovered by the Navy in the Bay of Bengal.
The upcoming test flight will look at the efficacy of the crew capsule's emergency escape system.