• The ISRO on Saturday launched the test vehicle which carried payloads related to India’s ambitious human space flight mission Gaganyaan which successfully splashed into the sea later as planned. 
• The payloads later splashed into the sea as planned, a development that witnessed jubilation.  
• The Gaganyaan programme aims to send humans into space on a Low Earth Orbit of 400 km for three days and bring them safely back to Earth. 

ISRO's unmanned test flight for its first human spaceflight mission 'Gaganyaan' today lifted off from Sriharikota, the first landmark in India's ambitious space mission. This mission was conducted to test the efficiency of the vehicle's crew escape system, which will be used in case astronauts need to eject in case of an emergency. "We are very happy to announce the success of the mission. The purpose of the mission was to demonstrate the crew escape system. The vehicle went slightly above the speed of sound before it initiated the crew escape system," Indian Space Research Organisation S Somanath said from the mission centre. The launch was initially halted due to bad weather and then due to the failure of the engine of TV-D1 to ignite. The ISRO scientists put the mission on course 75 minutes later when the rocket lifted off and achieved the goal of Crew Module and Crew Escape separation. TV D1 Mission was fully achieved, ISRO announced. The payloads splashed into the sea later which went as planned.

The ISRO chief hailed the team for their work in understanding and rectifying the glitch quickly and said that it was a big training for the team to prepare for the Gaganyaan programme. “I am happy that our team could understand and rectify the anomaly fast. Congratulations to everybody. This is a big training for the team here to prepare for the Gaganyaan programme,” he said in his address after the successful test.

The test was initially scheduled to be held at 8 am today which was postponed to 8.30 and then again to 8.45 am due to bad weather. With five seconds to go for the lift-off, the launch was halted due to the glitch.

Explaining the error, the ISRO chief said, “After going through the nominal lift-off process, there was a bolt issued by the ground computer which detected non-conformance for allowing the engine to continue the thrusting further. This happened due to a monitoring anomaly in the system. So, we could identify it very fast and correct it. To make the stage ready, it took some time to refill the gases. Once that was completed, we went through the proper automatic launch sequence which checked the entire health of the vehicle and finally, the mission computer authorized the launch to take off which released the rocket from the launchpad.”

The test vehicle mission is the predecessor to the Gaganyaan programme which aims to send humans into space on a Low Earth Orbit of 400kms for three days and bring them safely back to Earth. India will demonstrate its human spaceflight capabilities in a mission called Gaganyaan, scheduled to launch in 2024. The country will set up a space station by 2035 and work on a Venus orbiter as well as a Mars lander.

(With inputs from agencies)