India is in advance stage of preparation for it’s ambitious space exploration programme with identification of four test pilots from the Indian Air Force as “Astronaut-Designates” for the Gaganyan mission. ISRO is planing to send space crew consisting of 2 to 3 astronauts into Low Earth Orbit. The mission envisages the astronauts to remain in the orbit upto 3 days before returning at a predefined site in Indian waters. The training of the astronauts is on at Training Facility in Bengaluru.
More importantly, ISRO plans to send Indian astronauts to the Moon by 2040, ISRO chairman S Somanath revealed. It is relevant to note that India is one of the most advanced counties in the world in the sphere of space technology. The ISRO has braught laurels for India with astounding success of Chandrayaan-3 mission to the Moon. ISRO’s five year long solar exploratory mission Aditya L1, studying the Sun from Lagrange Point 1 with the help of seven indegeniously built scientific instruments is also launched in September this year.
As a crucial test flight before any subsequent missions to be carried out, ISRO has already completed the TV-D1 mission on October 21, 2023 by testing the Crew Escape System’s in-flight abort capabilities. The Indian Navy safely recovered from the Bay of Bengal an early unpressurised version of the Crew Module used for the mission successfully separated from the launch vehicle.
Many critical technologies such as the human-rated LVM3 launch vehicle and an Orbital Module consisting of Crew Module, Service Module and many life support systems will be tested during the first Gaganyaan mission. Two identical uncrewed missions apart from the Air Drop Test, Pad Abort Test, and Test Vehicle flights are planned before the actual crewed mission.
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