Gaganyaan's first test flight scheduled for October 21

The first test flight for India’s human space flight programme is scheduled for October 21, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said in New Delhi on Tuesday.

The Gaganyaan Test Vehicle Development flight (TV-D1) will be the first among two sets of trial flights that the Indian Space Research Organisation has planned before an Indian astronaut will fly to space - in an Indian craft sitting atop an Indian rocket.

This will be an abort mission in which the crew module will be separated from the rocket at an altitude of 11 km, fly a few more kilometres and descend on water.

At a felicitation programme for the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Chandrayaan-3 team, Singh said the TV-D1 launch was scheduled for October 21, in which ISRO would also test the efficacy of the crew escape system, a crucial part of the Gaganyaan mission.

The crew module will carry the astronauts to outer space and bring them back to the earth. The module will be recovered by the Indian Navy personnel from the Bay of Bengal after touchdown.

“The success of this test will set the stage for the first unmanned mission and ultimately the manned mission to outer space in low Earth orbit. Before the manned mission, there will be a test flight next year to carry Vyom Mitra, a female robot astronaut,” said the minister.

Depending on the success of the trial flights, the manned mission has been planned for 2024-end.

The Gaganyaan project envisages a demonstration of human spaceflight capability by launching a human crew to an orbit of 400 km and bringing them back. The plan is to send a crew of three for three days to space.

The prerequisites for such a complicated mission is the development of many critical technologies, including a human-rated launch vehicle for carrying crew safely to space, life support system to provide an earth-like environment to the crew in space, crew emergency escape provision and evolving crew management aspects for training, recovery and rehabilitation.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the Rs 10,000 crore human space flight mission in his Independence Day address in 2018. Four Indian Air Force pilots were selected as the first batch of astronauts but their identities have not been revealed.

ISRO officials earlier said the Gaganyaan mission would not be a one-off affair as the government had approved a "sustained human space flight programme".