The test will take place on Saturday at 8am.
New Delhi:
It will be a flight of failures that will make ISRO a success.
In a bid to prepare for any eventuality, which is now part of its ethos, the Indian Space Research Organization will conduct an abort test for the Gaganyaan manned space mission on Saturday.
A similar, foolproof approach had been taken for Chandrayaan-3, which had furthered the history of the ISRO script by making India the first country to land closer to the moon’s south pole in August. However, the stakes are much higher this time because human lives will be involved.
Dr. Speaking exclusively to DailyExpertNews, Unnikrishnan Nair, director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, an ISRO research centre, said the most important thing for the agency in the Gaganyaan mission is the safety of the crew.
“The first mission is to demonstrate the in-flight crew escape system. We must ensure that, at any time during the take-off phase, if something goes wrong with the vehicle, the safety of the crew is assured. The crew escape system crew, which will come into operation during the first phase of the vehicle, it must operate under different conditions,” he said.
The test is scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. from the first launch pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota. The crew escape system, where the unpressurized crew module will house the astronauts during the actual Gaganyaan flight, will be mounted on top of the test vehicle.
“When the vehicle reaches an altitude of 12 km and enters the transonic state, the vehicle thrust is terminated and the escape system engines are activated. This takes the crew module plus the crew escape system to an altitude of approximately 17 km. km. At that altitude, the crew module will be released from the escape system,” said Dr. Nair.
He said the crew module is designed to turn independently and orient itself in the desired direction. Once that’s done, parachutes will deploy and the module will slowly fall into the sea, about 10 km from the launch pad. The crew escape system and launch vehicle will also fall into the sea, but at a distance from the crew module.
The entire test is expected to take approximately nine minutes.
Expected to be launched in 2025, Gaganyaan aims to take a three-member crew to a 400 km orbit for a three-day mission and return them safely to Earth by landing in Indian waters.
