Gaganyaan test vehicle launch successful: ISRO chief S Somanath

After the successful launch, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief S Somanath in a live telecast from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre 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 has gone up to a speed of Mach 1.2, which is slightly more than the speed of sound.”

“It has initiated an abort condition for the crew escape system to function. The crew escape system took the crew module away from the vehicle and subsequently, the parachutes opened, and touched down in the sea at required velocity. This has been very well accomplished and we have got confirmation of data for all of this. We will be further doing the approach recovery operations for the crew module to be collected from the sea, and will be brought to the port by the ships. Till now, as per the data, everything has performed nominally,” he said.

Reason for hold

Explaining the reason for the hold at 8.45 am, he said, “After going through the nominal lift-off process there was a hold issued by the ground computer called the automatic launch sequence computer which detected a non-conformance for allowing the engine to continue with the thrusting to further go. This happened due to the monitoring anomaly in the system. We could identify it fast and correct it.”

To make the stage ready, it took some time to refill the gasses, Somanath said. Once that was completed the entire health of the vehicle was checked. “Finally, the mission computer authorised the take-off which released the vehicle from the launchpad. The subsequent coast abort sequence was executed perfectly,” he said.

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“This is a big training for the entire team to prepare for the Gaganyaan programme. We will come back with more analysis and data of this mission on recovery of the crew module which is happening new. We’re getting views from the sea from the ground cameras,” he said. Mission director S Sivakumar and the director of the crew module and crew escape system R Hutton also spoke.

Saturday’s test flight was the first unmanned test flight for Gaganyaan, the country’s first manned space mission.

The Gaganyaan project aims to demonstrate human spaceflight capability by launching a three-member crew to a low earth orbit of 400 km for three days, and bringing them back safely, with a planned splashdown in Indian Ocean waters.

The Gaganyaan crew module will house the astronauts in pressurised earth-like atmospheric conditions. TV-D1 has an unpressurised version that has completed integration and testing.

This crew module was recovered by an Indian Navy diving team after it splashed down in the Bay of Bengal.
TV-D1 is a single-stage liquid rocket and the payload consists of the crew module, escape systems with their fast-acting solid motors, crew module fairing and interface adapters, according to the space agency.

This flight simulated the abort condition during the ascent trajectory corresponding to Mach 1.2 that will be faced in the Gaganyaan mission.

Subsequently, the abort sequence was executed autonomously — commencing with the separation of the crew escape systems, to deployment of parachutes and culminating in the safe touchdown of the module about 10 km off the coast of Sriharikota.

The crew module has undergone electrical and acoustic tests at Isro’s facility in Bengaluru. It was dispatched to the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on August 13. It was tested further and pre-integrated with the crew escape system, before final integration with the test vehicle happened at the launchpad.

This is a major milestone for the Gaganyaan programme as a near-complete system was integrated for a flight test. Its success has set the stage for the remaining qualification tests and unmanned missions, leading to the first manned mission.