Kharge congratulates ISRO for success of Gaganyaan test flight mission

New Delhi: Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge congratulated the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on Saturday for successfully conducting the test vehicle mission ahead of the human space flight programme.

In a post on X, Kharge said the country's human space flight programme has been in the works since 2007 and expressed happiness that it is moving towards achieving its goal.

"Our best wishes to all the scientists, space engineers, crew and researchers at ISRO for the success of Gaganyaan test flight mission (TV-D1)," he said.

"India's human space flight programme has been in the works since 2007 and after decades of rigorous hard work and dedication we are advancing towards that goal," he said.

Overcoming initial hiccups, including a monitoring anomaly, the ISRO on Saturday successfully launched a test vehicle with payloads related to the country's ambitious human space flight programme, Gaganyaan.

Scientists simulated an abort situation for the Crew Escape System (CES) to carry the crew module out of the test vehicle, TV-D1, as they made a splash into the Bay of Bengal with planned precision, setting off jubilation among the ISRO scientists at the Mission Control Centre.

The crew module (CM) is where the astronauts are contained in a pressurised earth-like atmospheric condition during the Gaganyaan mission. For TV-D1, the CM was an unpressurised version, the ISRO said. The Navy was slated to recover them from the sea and take to the Chennai port, officials said.