New Delhi:

ISRO’s unmanned test flight for its first human spaceflight mission ‘Gaganyaan’ today lifted off from Sriharikota, the first landmark in India’s ambitious space mission.

This flight abort test was conducted to test the efficiancy of the vehicle’s crew escape system, which will be used in case astronauts need to eject in case of an emergency.

“We are very happy to announce the success of the mission. The purpose of the mission was to demonstrate the crew escape system. The vehicle went slightly above the speed of sound, before it initiated the crew escape system,” Indian Space Research Organisation S Somanath said from the mission centre.

“The 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,” he added.

Mr Somanath said that the agency is now working to retreive the crew modules from the sea.

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

Test Vehicle D1 mission was scheduled for a lift-off from the first launch pad at 8 am which was revised to 8.45 am. But just 5 seconds before the launch, the countdown stopped. ISRO identified the cause and successfully pulled off the test at 10am.

The test vehicle mission is the predecessor to the Gaganyaan programme which aims to send humans into space on a Low Earth Orbit of 400kms for three days and bring them safely back to the Earth.

India will demonstrate its human spaceflight capabilities in a mission called Gaganyaan, scheduled to launch in 2024. The country will set up a space station by 2035 and work on a Venus orbiter as well as a Mars lander.

Chennai:

ISRO has lined up a series of exploration missions including to Mars, Venus and to the Moon again, apart from the maiden human spaceflight programme, Chairman S Somanath said on Sunday.

The space agency also has drawn up plans to launch missions for studying climate and weather conditions of the Earth, the space agency chief said, speaking to reporters.

Besides, ISRO is also working on regular scientific missions including communication, remote sensing satellites, S Somanath, who is also the Secretary of the Department of Space, said in Chennai.

Speaking about the Gaganyaan programme, he said the maiden TV-D1 test flight is scheduled for October 21.

Elaborating about the upcoming missions undertaken by the Bengaluru-headquartered space agency, he said, “We have exploration missions. We have plans to go to Mars, Venus, again sometime to the Moon. We also have programmes to look at the climate and weather of Earth.” Stressing that the scientists at ISRO would be focused on taking up regular missions like launching satellites for communications and remote sensing, he said scientific missions are also in the pipeline to look at issues like aeronomy, thermal imaging, and climate change impact assessment.

“So many things are there and we are very busy doing all of this,” he said.

To a query about whether scientists were able to receive any kind of response from the Vikram lander of the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, which successfully made a soft-landing on the surface of the Moon on August 23, he said Vikram had done its job very well during the lunar day (equivalent of 14 Earth days) at which time it was programmed to perform its functions.

“It is happily sleeping on the Moon. It has done its job very well. Maybe if it wishes to wake up, let it wake up. Until then, we will wait,” he said. ISRO made efforts to re-establish communication with rover Pragyan and lander Vikram after they were put into sleep mode in September following the onset of night on the Moon.

“No signals have been received from them. Efforts to establish contact will continue,” ISRO had said.

After the historic landing on August 23, lander Vikram and rover Pragyan performed different tasks on the lunar surface, including detecting the presence of sulphur and recording relative temperature.

About ISRO’s maiden mission to study the Sun, Mr Somanath said the spacecraft is ‘very healthy’ and is on a 110-day long journey to the Lagrange point L1 and is expected to reach the intended destination by “middle of January.” “It is a long journey. It is almost 110 days of journey and it has covered some distance now. We corrected a little bit of its trajectory, because early correction is important to reach the L1 point. After tracking, we find it is going in the right direction towards the L1 point,” he said.

Observing that the rocket is on a ‘complex travel’, Mr Somanath said, “It takes almost another 70-75 days further to reach. By the middle of January, it will reach there. After that, we will make some corrections to make it enter into the Halo orbit at the L1 point.” “After that instruments will be switched on and it will start doing the scientific data streaming. Currently, everything is very healthy on Aditya L1,” he said.

Aditya-L1 was launched on September 2, and it is the first Indian space-based observatory that will study the Sun from a halo orbit around the first Sun-Earth Lagrangian point (L1), which is located roughly 1.5 million km from the Earth.

Earlier, S Somanath visited the residence of renowned agricultural scientist M S Swaminathan, who passed away on September 28. He met the family members of the eminent plant geneticist known as the driving force behind India’s ‘Green Revolution’, here in the city.

“I am here today just to pay my tributes and my affection to his (M S Swaminathan’s) contribution… Whoever works in whichever field whether it is space, agriculture or sustainability and many other domains, we all find a place to work together,” he said.

“Thank you so much for the opportunity. His (MS Swaminathan’s) legacy will continue to inspire more young people in the country to work in science and technology.” S Somanath said.

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