The Indian Space Research Organisation on Saturday morning launched the first of a series of test flights for the Gaganyaan Mission 2025. ISRO’s latest endeavour will see India sending astronauts into space in 2025 but before that, it will carry out several test flights to ensure everything is in perfect order for a safe mission.

The test flight was launched at 10:00 AM from Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, in what was the second attempt of the day. The first effort was halted five seconds before its scheduled time after the mission’s ground computers detected an anomaly, said ISRO Chief S Somanath. The Navy will later recover the crew module from the Bay of Bengal.

The Gaganyaan project is ISRO’s human spaceflight programme, aimed to send humans into space. The project’s goal is to launch a crew of three astronauts into low Earth orbit and bring them back safely to Earth. 

Before sending humans into space, the test missions include the Integrated AirDrop Test, the Pad Abort Test, and Test Vehicle flights to ensure everything works well. ISRO will send humans into space only after they are sure it’s safe.

Mission Gaganyaan

TV D1 Test Flight is accomplished.

Crew Escape System performed as intended.

Mission Gaganyaan gets off on a successful note. @DRDO_India@indiannavy#Gaganyaan

— ISRO (@isro) October 21, 2023

“I am very happy to announce the successful accomplishment of the TV-D1 Mission,” S Somanath said soon after the test flight launch.

“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 a Mach number, which is slightly above the speed of sound and initiated an abort condition for the crew escape system to function,” he said.

The ISRO chief added that the crew escape system took the crew module away from the vehicle and subsequent operations including the touch-down at the sea have been very well accomplished.