NEWS – Group Captain Prasanth Balakrishnan Nair, Group Captain Ajit Krishnan, Group Captain Angad Pratap, and Wing Commander Shubhanshu Shukla are India’s astronauts-designate for Gaganyaan, India’s first crewed space mission

HIGHLIGHTS

• The first mission flight, Gaganyaan-1, an unmanned test flight to check technology readiness, is expected by the end of 2024
• The manned mission, which will take a three-member crew into a low earth orbit of 400 km altitude and return to Earth after three days, will follow
• In 1984, Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma became the first Indian in space when he flew to the Salyut 7 space station on a Soviet spacecraft
• In 2006, India started work on an orbital vehicle mission that was later named Gaganyaan
• As the astronauts-designate are named, here’s where the various aspects of the mission stand

HUMAN RATING OF LAUNCH VEHICLE

• ISRO will use its LVM3 rocket for all of Gaganyaan missions
• LVM3
  • Earlier called GSLV-MkIII (Indian space agency’s most powerful launch vehicle that has flown seven times without failure)
  • Consists of liquid stage, solid stage, and cryogenic stage.
  • ISRO Reconfigured all components of LVM-3 to meet human rating requirements
• CE20 – Cryogenic engine – successfully passed the test – was certified for missions that would transport humans to space
• Vikas engine – To be used in the liquid stage, and the solid booster, which is part of the solid stage, have already qualified for the missions.
• The special flight engine, which ignites as the rocket lifts off, has completed acceptance tests
• These tests certify/ qualify the test performance of the hardware according to the mission requirement. The technology or development is then applied in the final mission

CREW MODULE AND ESCAPE SYSTEM

WHAT PREPARATIONS FOR THE HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT INCLUDES

• Development of life support systems to provide an Earth-like environment for the crew in space
• Provisions for emergency escape
• Evolving crew management aspects for training, recovery
• Rehabilitation of the crew

TESTS

Gaganyaan-1

• Unmanned mission – Precursor mission to demonstrate the levels of technology preparedness before the manned mission
• Carry an unpressurised crew module — the capsule in which the astronauts will be seated during the human flight — to space and back
• Will not have the Environment Control and Life Support System, which ensures an Earth-like environment inside the module
• ISRO is currently developing and testing the various components of the system at its labs

A second unmanned flight

• Planned with a pressurised crew module
• Complete life support system will be tested
• Flight will carry the robot Vyommitra which will record all parameters to study the impact of the flight on humans.
• The schedules for these missions are not final yet

Crew Escape System

• In October last year, ISRO successfully conducted the first test of a basic crew module and crew escape system (CES)
• The CES is a part of the module that ensures “the crew is taken to a safe distance in case of any emergency either at launch pad or during ascent phase
• Drogue chutes play an essential role in stabilising the crew module and reducing its velocity to a safe level during re-entry
• They bring the crew module from a height of 17 km and speed of 150 metres/ second to 2.5 km from the sea surface and a speed of 63 metres/ sec.
• ISRO has also been experimenting with a crew module uprighting system, which ensures that the module remains upright after splashdown in the sea

TRAINING OF THE ASTRONAUTS

Generic training at Russia’s Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre between February 2020 and March 2021 ( MOU between ISRO and in June 2019)

Current training

• ISRO’s astronaut training facility in Bengaluru
• Now being trained on subsystem functioning on various subsystem simulators
• Are a part of the development process of the crew module design, as they can pinpoint what is comfortable, what works etc
• One of the four astronauts is expected to be trained by the American space agency NASA