Published: October 21, 2023 3:38 am
Author: RT
The test flight for the upcoming Gaganyaan mission was put on hold few seconds before lift off
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said it has postponed the first of a series of test flights in preparation for the ambitious human spacelift mission Gaganyaan, which is planned to be launched in 2025.
The Flight Test Vehicle Abort Mission 1, which was intended for observing the performance of the crew escape system, was scheduled to lift off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota in southern India’s Andhra Pradesh state on Saturday morning. However, few seconds before the launch, it was put on hold.
“The lift-off attempt could not happen today. Engine ignition has not happened in the nominal course, we need to find out what went wrong. The vehicle is safe, we need to look at what happened… will correct it and schedule launch soon,” ISRO chairman S. Somanath stated.
The mission was primarily aimed to tested the efficacy of the crew escape system on the Gaganyaan mission’s crew module, which will allow those onboard to exit the spacecraft if the mission is aborted.
“Test Vehicle mission with this CM [crew module] is a significant milestone for the overall Gaganyaan programme as a near-complete system is integrated for a flight test. The success of this test flight will set the stage for the remaining qualification tests and unmanned missions, leading to the first Gaganyaan mission with Indian Astronauts,” ISRO said in a statement earlier this month.
Through the Gaganyaan mission, which would cost the country around 90 billion Indian rupees ($ 1 billion), India plans to demonstrate its human spaceflight capability by taking a crewed spacecraft to an altitude of about 400km above the Earth for four days to a week. It will then splash down into the Indian Ocean.
For the mission, ISRO will use the LVM3 (Launch Vehicle Mark-3) rocket which was earlier used for India’s Chandrayaan-3 mission to the Moon. If the ‘Gaganyaan’ mission is successful, India will become only the fourth country, after the US, Soviet Union, and China, to launch a crewed spacecraft all by itself.
Glimpses of India’s all-new Test Vehicle 🚀 being readied for maiden mission ‘TV-D1’ that’ll liftoff 8am tomo
Aug 2022 we saw SSLV being readied for launch and now we have a sub-orbital TV rocket for #Gaganyaan test flights
Let’s go🇮🇳#isro #india #space #tech #science #ISRO pic.twitter.com/3fezvwfcg8— Sidharth.M.P (@sdhrthmp) October 20, 2023
On Tuesday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired a high-level meeting to assess the progress of the country’s first human spacelift. During the meeting, India’s Department of Space presented to Modi a comprehensive overview of the mission, including “various technologies developed for the mission, such as human-rated launch vehicles and system qualification.” The Gaganyaan mission, which is now slated for 2025, has been delayed multiple times, first due to the Covid-19 pandemic and then over safety concerns.
The crew for Gaganyaan, comprising four Indian Air Force personnel, is currently being trained in southern India’s Karnataka state after initially having undergone the basic training at Russia’s Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center at Star City, about 30 kilometers north of Moscow, from February 2020 to March 2021. According to Indian media reports, they were being made to understand flight systems, microgravity, flying in space, medical procedures, academic courses, flight suits and simulators.
