<p>Pinned down by the pandemic, India’s first manned space mission Gaganyaan might be delayed by a year or two, but that did not stop the project’s director R Hutton from diving deep into its complexities as a bunch of engineering students listened in rapt attention here on Monday. </p>.<p>Ambitious in scale, unprecedented even by the Indian Space Research Organisation's (Isro) standards, Gaganyaan could be a game-changer. The big plan, announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, was to get the mission blast off with three Indian Gaganauts, stay in a low orbit of 400 km for three days and splash down either in the Arabian Sea or the Bay of Bengal. </p>.<p>Plagued by delays, Isro’s best bet is to get at least one of the project’s two preceding unmanned missions off the ground this year. But at the Science Day talk arranged by the Institution of Engineers here, Hutton’s focus was clearly on the successes that Isro’s technology demonstration missions achieved in 2014 and 2018. </p>.<p>As early as 2007, he reminded, Isro had cracked the Space Capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE), laying the foundation for the mission’s re-entry. SRE also recorded two micro-gravity experiments. Safe re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere is critical for the manned mission’s viability. </p>.<p>In 2014, the space agency had also conducted the Crew Module Re-entry Experiment (CARE) with an end-to-end parachute system validation. "Through aero-braking and the parachute drag, the module’s speed of 5-6 km per second can be reduced to 25-30 kmph,” Hutton explained. </p>.<p>The Pad Abort Test (PAT) recorded in 2018 was critical for a crew escape system, a euphemism to get the Gaganauts safely out of an undesirable event at the launchpad. "Throughout the mission, the acceleration has to be kept within 4g. The crew module’s impact in the sea has to be at a safe speed level." </p>.<p>Within the crew module, he pointed out, the mission has to integrate a foolproof life-support system, a crew seat and viewpoint, orbital debris mitigation system to evade free particles in space. "The seats will have to be in a sleeping posture to avoid the impact of accelerations that can range from 4 g to 12 g. The module itself has to be protected from extreme temperatures that can go up to 2,000 degrees Celsius." </p>
<p>Pinned down by the pandemic, India’s first manned space mission Gaganyaan might be delayed by a year or two, but that did not stop the project’s director R Hutton from diving deep into its complexities as a bunch of engineering students listened in rapt attention here on Monday. </p>.<p>Ambitious in scale, unprecedented even by the Indian Space Research Organisation's (Isro) standards, Gaganyaan could be a game-changer. The big plan, announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself, was to get the mission blast off with three Indian Gaganauts, stay in a low orbit of 400 km for three days and splash down either in the Arabian Sea or the Bay of Bengal. </p>.<p>Plagued by delays, Isro’s best bet is to get at least one of the project’s two preceding unmanned missions off the ground this year. But at the Science Day talk arranged by the Institution of Engineers here, Hutton’s focus was clearly on the successes that Isro’s technology demonstration missions achieved in 2014 and 2018. </p>.<p>As early as 2007, he reminded, Isro had cracked the Space Capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE), laying the foundation for the mission’s re-entry. SRE also recorded two micro-gravity experiments. Safe re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere is critical for the manned mission’s viability. </p>.<p>In 2014, the space agency had also conducted the Crew Module Re-entry Experiment (CARE) with an end-to-end parachute system validation. "Through aero-braking and the parachute drag, the module’s speed of 5-6 km per second can be reduced to 25-30 kmph,” Hutton explained. </p>.<p>The Pad Abort Test (PAT) recorded in 2018 was critical for a crew escape system, a euphemism to get the Gaganauts safely out of an undesirable event at the launchpad. "Throughout the mission, the acceleration has to be kept within 4g. The crew module’s impact in the sea has to be at a safe speed level." </p>.<p>Within the crew module, he pointed out, the mission has to integrate a foolproof life-support system, a crew seat and viewpoint, orbital debris mitigation system to evade free particles in space. "The seats will have to be in a sleeping posture to avoid the impact of accelerations that can range from 4 g to 12 g. The module itself has to be protected from extreme temperatures that can go up to 2,000 degrees Celsius." </p>
