Space ISRO
India Advancing towards its first human spaceflight mission ISRO successfully conducts the third long duration hot test of the liquid propellant Vikas Engine for the core L110 liquid stage of the human rated GSLV MkIII vehicle By Ayushee Chaudhary
Photographs: ISRO
The Vikas Engine was fired for a duration of 240 seconds at ISRO’s Propulsion Complex engine test facility in Mahendragiri, Tamil Nadu.
India’s space agency has moved one more step further on its way towards the nation’s first manned space mission by completing another successful engine test. On July 14, 2021, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully conducted the third long duration hot test of the liquid propellant Vikas Engine for the core L110 liquid stage of the human rated GSLV MkIII vehicle, as part of the engine qualification requirements for the Gaganyaan programme, stated ISRO’s media brief. The engine was fired for a duration of 240 seconds at ISRO’s Propulsion Complex (IPRC) engine test facility in Mahendragiri, Tamil Nadu. The agency informed that the performance of the engine met the test objectives and the engine parameters were closely matching with the predictions during the entire duration of the test. Amid the social media appreciation that came pouring for India’s space agency, SpaceX founder Elon Musk also took to Twitter to congratulate ISRO on this achievement. Gaganyaan is ISRO’s most ambitious project of sending humans to space. Until now, only three nations (Russia, United States of America and China) have launched their own crewed spacecraft. One of the major objectives of the Gaganyaan programme is to demonstrate indigenous capability of India to undertake human space flight mission to low earth orbit (LEO).
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“The programme envisages undertaking the demonstration of human spaceflight to LEO in the short-term and lay the foundation for a sustained Indian human space exploration programme in the long run,” stated ISRO. The agency also believes that having a vibrant human spaceflight programme can be leveraged as a potent foreign policy tool. With the Gaganyaan mission, India’s first “vyomanauts” (Indian astronauts) would be going to the LEO, onboard an Indian vehicle. The first unmanned mission was earlier planned for December 2021 and the second one was scheduled for 2022-23. However, given the delays that the programme has experienced due to the pandemic, the launch is likely to take place only next year. The uncrewed missions are aimed for technology demonstration, safety and reliability verification and will be heavily instrumented to study the performance of systems before crewed flight. Meanwhile, four Indian Air Force (IAF) test pilots are already undergoing generic space flight training in Russia as part of the Gaganyaan programme. These astronaut trainees have been selected based on criterion jointly defined by ISRO and IAF which comprises of flying experience, fitness, psychological and aeromedical evaluation (including anthropometric parameters). The Human Space Flight Centre (HSFC) was also inaugurated in 2019 at ISRO headquarter campus in Bengaluru
ISSUE 7 • 2021
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