Gaganyaan : ISRO aces safety test for its 1st human space flight

New Delhi, October 21

In a crucial experiment having bearing on the safety of astronauts, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Saturday successfully tested the crew escape system of its ambitious “Ganganyaan” human space flight programme.

After a two-hour delay and some anxious moments as the engine of the rocket failed to ignite property, the liquid-propelled single-stage test vehicle with the crew module and crew escape system (CES) mounted at its fore end finally took off from the first launch pad of the ISRO space port at Sriharikota at 10 am.

During an action-filled 10 minutes, the CES with crew module attached to it first separated from the rocket and subsequently the crew module (CM) separated from the CES and gently landed in the sea with the aid of parachutes at a distance of 10 km off the coast of Sriharikota. The CM was recovered from sea by an Indian Navy team. The CES splashed into the waters at a distance of 14 km from the coast.

The test was conducted primarily to demonstrate whether the crew could safely escape the rocket in case it malfunctioned. Addressing the media, ISRO Chairman S Somanath said: “I am very happy to announce the successful accomplishment of the TV-D1 mission. The purpose of this mission was to demonstrate the crew escape system for the Gaganyaan programme through a test vehicle demonstration in which the vehicle went up to Mach 1, which is slightly above the speed of sound, and initiated an abort condition for the crew escape system to function.”

“The crew escape system took the crew module away from the vehicle, and subsequent operations, including the deployment of parachutes and touch-down at sea, have been very well accomplished,” said Somanath. Regarding the problem faced with igniting the rocket initially, Somanath said the glitch emanated from a monitoring anomaly that was quickly identified and corrected.