Gaganyaan Test Flight Successful, Crew Escape Module Touches Down

Sriharikota: Overcominginitial hiccups including amonitoring anomaly, ISRO onSaturday successfully launched
a test vehicle with payloadsrelated to the country’s ambitioushuman space flight programme,Gaganyaan.
Scientists simulated an abortsituation for the Crew EscapeSystem (CES) to carry the CrewModule out of the test vehicle,TV-D1, as they made a splashinto the Bay of Bengal withplanned precision, setting offjubilation among ISRO scientistsat the Mission Control Center.Crew Module (CM) is wherethe astronauts are contained in apressurised earth-likeatmospheric condition during theGaganyaan mission. For TV-D1,the CM was an unpressurised
version, ISRO said. The Navywas slated to recover them fromthe sea and take to the Chennaiport, officials said. “I am veryhappy to announce the successfulaccomplishment of the TV-D1mission. The purpose of themission was to demonstrate thecrew escape system for theGaganyaan programme througha test vehicle demonstration inwhich the vehicle has gone up toa Mach and above, which is thespeed of sound and initiated anabort condition for the CES to
function,” a beaming ISROChairman S Somanath said fromthe Mission Control Center.Gaganyaan programme aims tosend humans into space on a LowEarth Orbit of 400 km for threedays and bring them safely backto the Earth.Smiles came back on the facesof ISRO scientists much late onSaturday as weather-relatedissues first forced a reschedulingof the launch, from the original 8am to 8.30 am and again 15minutes later. However, just 4
seconds before the single-stageliquid propelled rocket was setto soar into the skies, a “hold”sign flashed on the screens.”…after going through thenominal liftoff process, there wasa hold issued by the groundcomputer which is called theautomatic launch sequencecomputer. It detected sort of anon-conformance following theengine to continue the thrustingto further go,” Somanathexplained.”This happened due to amonitoring anomaly in thesystem. So we could identify itvery very fast and correct it,” headded. It took some time to refillthe gases and once that was
completed, the team went through

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