Gaganyaan the manned space mission of India.

Gaganyaan the space dream of India.

Gaganyaan ("Orbital Vehicle") is an Indian crewed orbital program intended to be the basis of the Indian Human Space Flight Programme. The spacecraft is being designed to carry three people, and a planned upgraded version will be equipped with rendezvous and docking capability. In its maiden crewed mission, Indian Space Research Organization  largely autonomous 3.7-tonne capsule will orbit the Earth at 400 km (250 mi) altitude for up to seven days with a three-person crew on board. The crewed vehicle is planned to be launched on ISRO's GSLV MKVIII in December 2021. This Hal-manufactured crew module had its first un-crewed experimental flight on 18 December 2014.

Gaganyaan is a fully autonomous 3.7-tonne spacecraft designed to carry a 3-member crew to orbit and safely return to the Earth after a mission duration of few orbits and up to seven days. The capsule is similar to the Soyuz Shaped reentry spacecraft. Its service module is powered by two liquid propellant engines. The crew module is mated to the service module, and together they are called the orbital module. Based on the payload capability of the GSLV-III booster, the service module would have a mass of about 3 tonnes.The space capsule will have life support and environmental control systems. It will be equipped with emergency mission abort and emergency escape that can be done at the first stage or second stage of the rocket burn. The nose of the original version of the orbital vehicle was free for a docking mechanism, but primary entry was evidently through a side hatch secured by explosive bolts.Following two uncrewed demonstrations of the spacecraft, a crewed Gaganyaan is slated to be launched on the GSLV Mk III launcher in 2021.About 16 minutes after liftoff from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre  (SDSC), Sriharikota, the rocket will inject the spacecraft into an orbit 300–400 km above Earth. The capsule would return for a splashdown in the Bay of Bengal.While many technological elements to put together a crewed flight are already available, ISRO would need to develop many new technologies to ensure a reliable and safe life-support and escape system for the crew. And in order to perfect the reentry techniques considered crucial for a crewed flight, ISRO is planning to carry out three more flights of Space Recovery Capsules (SRE) and few uncrewed flights of the Gaganyaanspacecraft.On 13 February 2014, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited handed over the first Crew Module structural assembly to ISRO. ISRO's Vikram Sarabhai Space centre Thiruvananthapuram would equip the Crew Module with systems necessary for life support, navigation, guidance and control systems. ISRO undertook an uncrewed test launch of the vehicle aboard the GSLV Mk 3 X1 experimental sub-orbital flight on 18 December 2014. The GSLV Mk3 launcher with a dummy upper cryogenic stage (filled with liquid nitrogen to simulate weight of fuel) was launched at 9:30am from the second launch pad at Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota. The crew module separated from the rocket at an altitude of 126 km. On board motors controlled and reduced the speed of the module until an altitude of 80 km. Thrusters were shutoff at 80 km and atmospheric drag further reduced speed of the capsule. The module heat shield was expected to experience temperature in excess of 1600 °C. Parachutes were deployed at an altitude of 15 km to slow down the module which performed a soft landing in the Bay of Bengal near Andaman and Nicobar islands.
Author:Rodger Bloor (Gurunithyan Rahul)