ISRO’s Gaganyaan Mission

• ISRO’s Gaganyaan Mission would be the first programmed step toward developing India’s capability in human spaceflight.
• It’s a mission that aims to establish the following objectives:
  • Human spaceflight demonstration, which establishes India’s ability to send humans into space; and finally,
  • A program that would sustain this mission through creating an enabling environment for deploying a long-term human space program in India.
  • Spaceship technology enhancement
    • independently developing in India, a skill nationally in space technology and astronaut training for orbital safety.

More about the Gaganyaan Mission:

• The crew will consist of three astronauts, known as vyomanauts, who will complete three days of orbiting the Earth at a 400-kilometer altitude.
• It is going to be launched using GSLV Mk-III rocket also referred as “Bahubali” rocket.
• Spacemen will wear space suits in orange color made by Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram.
• The crew can sunrise and sunset, see India from space every 24 hours.
• The spaceborne humans will conduct experiments under microgravity.
• This spacecraft will return to Earth approximately 36 hours later and splash down in the Arabian Sea.
• The Gaganyaan Program is pegged at approximately 9023.00 crores INR.

HSFC’s Contribution to the Gaganyaan Program of ISRO

• HSFC also coordinates and handles the human spaceflight aspect of Gaganyaan according to ISRO.
• The center advances R&D in technology areas like life support systems; Human Factors Engineering; Bioastronautics; Crew training; Human rating & certification.
• The goal of the Gaganyaan project is to build human space flight capabilities for the launching of 3 crewmembers into an orbit of 400 km for a mission of 3 days, including recovering them in Indian sea waters.
• Such a project incorporates development of critical technologies – human-rated launch vehicle, life support system, crew emergency escape provision, and evolving crew management aspects.
• Some of the preliminary missions are Integrated Air Drop Test (IADT), Pad Abort Test (PAT), and Test Vehicle (TV) flights to demonstrate the Technology Preparedness Levels before actual mission.

Human-rated LVM3:

• Human rated LVM3 rocket, a premier potential ISRO heavy lift launcher for Gaganyaan mission, is identified as the launch vehicle for this mission.
• The HLVM3 consists of a Crew Escape System (CES) which is powered by high burn rate solid motors.

Orbital Module

• The Orbital Module (OM) consists of both the Crew Module (CM) and Service Module (SM), and both modules will be equipped with state-of-the-art avionics systems and adequate redundancy for human safety.
• SM shall also furnish all such support required by CM from orbit.

Gaganyaan’s New Facilities

• Such systems are being built and brought forth, engineering systems that have realized human-centric systems and target safety for humans.