New Delhi:
ISRO today successfully launched its unmanned test flight for its first human spaceflight mission – ‘Gaganyaan’ – in the second attempt after the lift-off was briefly put on hold.
“The lift off was put on hold initially after ground computer detected non conformance. We could identify it and correct it very quickly,” said ISRO chief S Somnath.
The ISRO Chief said that 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,” he said.
“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.
“We will come back with more data and analysis after recovery of the crew modules from the sea,” Mr Somnath said.
Mission Director S Sivakumar said that all systems “performed well” during the test flight launch.
“This is like a never before attempt. It is like a bouquet of three experiments put together. We have now seen the characteristics of all three systems with what we wanted to test through this experiment or this mission. The test vehicle, the crew escape system, the crew module everything, we have perfectly demonstrated in the first attempt,” he said.
The ambitious space mission Gaganyaan is a significant milestone in the effort to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s target of setting up an Indian Space Station by 2035 and launch Indian astronaut to the Moon by 2040.
