Gaganyaan mission: Indian Navy recovers crew module that blast off from TVD1 simulating human spaceflight abort mission

The Indian Navy's fleet in Bay of Bengal retrieved the crew module which soft-landed at a desired velocity after it got separated from the Test Vehicle Demonstration 1 rocket that blast off from Sriharikota spaceport. The visuals from the drones show the crew module intact and being reeled into a Naval ship.

Sriharikota: Indian Navy has recovered the crew module that blast off from TVD1 simulating human spaceflight abort mission, in Bay of Bengal sea here on Saturday.

Overcoming initial hiccups including a monitoring anomaly, ISRO successfully launched the test vehicle with payloads related to the country's ambitious human space flight programme, Gaganyaan after a delay of 2 hours.

• Mission Gaganyaan
  
  TV D1 Test Flight is accomplished.
  
  Crew Escape System performed as intended.
  
  Mission Gaganyaan gets off on a successful note. @DRDO_India@indiannavy#Gaganyaan

  — ISRO (@isro) October 21, 2023 " class="align-text-top noRightClick twitterSection" data="

  Mission Gaganyaan
  
  TV D1 Test Flight is accomplished.
  
  Crew Escape System performed as intended.
  
  Mission Gaganyaan gets off on a successful note. @DRDO_India@indiannavy#Gaganyaan

  — ISRO (@isro) October 21, 2023

  ">

  Mission Gaganyaan
  
  TV D1 Test Flight is accomplished.
  
  Crew Escape System performed as intended.
  
  Mission Gaganyaan gets off on a successful note. @DRDO_India@indiannavy#Gaganyaan

  — ISRO (@isro) October 21, 2023

After liftoff, the TVD1 travelled at Mach 1.2 ( Mach 1- speed of sound). From the rocket, the crew module separated at the desired time and it veered off from the rocket. The crew module splashed down in the Bay of Bengal, 10 kilometres off the coast of the Indian Spaceport in Sriharikota. The two ships, INS Shakti and SCI Saraswati, were already waiting to recover the empty module.

The recovering of the module was not an easy feat for the Indian Navy, as the crew module weighs around 4.5 tonnes and this lifting task necessitates heavy-duty shipborne cranes.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) blasted for the Test Vehicle Demonstration 1 from the first launchpad of the spaceport here in Sriharikota at 10 am, the first of the 20 big tests that ISRO has planned for the near future.

ISRO Chief S Somanath announced the successful accomplishment of the TV-D1 mission. "The purpose of this mission was to demonstrate the crew escape system for the Gaganyaan program through a test vehicle demonstration in which the vehicle went up to a Mach number, which is slightly above the speed of sound and initiated an abort condition for the crew escape system to function," ISRO chief said.

"The crew escape system took the crew module away from the vehicle and subsequent operations including the touch-down at the sea have been very well accomplished," he added.