Gaganyaan Mission

• Context (IE): PM announces 4 astronauts for Gaganyaan Mission.
• 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.
• Gaganyaan is the 1^st human space flight programme of ISRO.
• Objective: To demonstrate indigenous capability of human space flight to low earth orbit.
• Launch vehicle: GSLV-Mk III, also called the LVM-3 (Launch Vehicle Mark-3).
• Payloads:
  • Crew Module: It is the spacecraft carrying human beings.
  • Service Module: It will support the crew module and is powered by liquid propellant engines.
• This mission consists of:
  • Two unmanned missions (G1 & G2): 2nd uncrewed mission (G2) will carry “Vyommitra” (a female-looking humanoid robot developed by ISRO to function on-board the Gaganyaan).
  • One manned mission (G3): The Orbital Module of the crewed mission will carry three Indian astronauts, including a woman into space for 7 days. It will orbit the Earth at a low-earth-orbit at an altitude of 300-400 km.
• India will become the 4th nation in the world to launch a Human Spaceflight Mission after USA, Russia, and China.
• Russia and France are cooperating with India for Gaganyaan mission.

Human rated LVM3 – HLVM3

• It is a three-stage vehicle with a 110 ton core liquid propellant stage (L-110) and a strap-on stage with two solid propellant motors, each with 200 tons propellant (S-200).
• The upper stage will be cryogenic fueled with a propellant loading of 25 tons (C-25).
• The LVM-3 has a lift-off mass of 640 tonnes, and it can carry a payload of up to 4,000 kilograms into geosynchronous transfer orbit (GTO) at 35,000 km.
• HLVM3 consists of Crew Escape System (CES) powered by a set of quick acting, high burn rate solid motors which ensures that Crew Module along with crew is taken to a safe distance in case of any emergency either at launch pad or during ascent phase.

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.”
• The Gaganyaan-1 mission’s crew module will not have the Environment Control and Life Support System, which ensures an Earth-like environment inside the module. 
• Gaganyaan-1 will mainly test the safe re-entry of the crew module and proper orientation of the module when it splashes down in the sea.
• A second unmanned flight is planned with a pressurised crew module, in which the complete life support system will be tested.
  • This flight will carry the robot ‘Vyommitra’ which will record all parameters to study the impact of the flight on humans.
• Test Vehicle Abort Mission-1 (TV-D1) will demonstrate the performance of the Crew Escape System.

Test Vehicle Abort Mission-1 (TV-D1)

• The Test Vehicle is a single-stage liquid rocket developed for this abort mission.
• The payloads consist of the Crew Module (CM) and Crew Escape Systems (CES) with their fast-acting solid motors, along with CM fairing (CMF) and Interface Adapters.
• CES with CM will be separated from the Test Vehicle at an altitude of about 17 km.
• Subsequently, the abort sequence will be executed autonomously commencing with the separation of CES and deployment of the series of parachutes, finally culminating in the safe touchdown of CM in the sea, about 10 km from the coast of Sriharikota.

Training of the astronauts

• The four astronauts completed their generic training at Russia’s Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre between February 2020 and March 2021.
• One of the four astronauts is expected to be trained by the American space agency NASA.