Gaganyaan

Background

The national space agency of India – now known as the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) – has been launching rockets to space since 1967. India became the seventh country to achieve orbital flight with a successful ISRO deployment of a satellite in 1980. Through the following decades, India continued to launch satellites into orbit, and is now one of the leading countries operating satellites, including those for communication, earth observation and position fixing.

ISRO has also worked on the development of more powerful rockets, allowing longer distance spaceflights, and in recent years has achieved a number of prominent milestones in space exploration.

• In 2008, the Chandrayaan-1 mission went into lunar orbit and released a probe that achieved a controlled impact on the Moon’s surface. That mission confirmed the existence of water ice in the region around the lunar south pole.
• In 2014, the Mangalyaan mission, or Mars Orbiter Mission, entered Martian orbit, making India the first country to achieve such an orbit on its first attempt.
• In 2023, the Chandrayaan-3 mission achieved the first ever soft landing close to the lunar south pole, deploying a rover that made further measurements in that region.

The LVM3 rocket

The Gaganyaan mission will be using an upgraded version of the Launch Vehicle Mark-3 or LVM3 rocket. The first test flight of the LVM3 was in 2014, with a total of nine launches since, experiencing a 100% success rate. Although not needed for its flights so far, the LVM3 was designed with sufficient weight capacity and acceleration limits to allow human spaceflight, with an eye to its future use. The rocket is currently undergoing the process of human-rating certification, ensuring that reliability and strength parameters meet the tighter criteria required for human spaceflight. Gaganyaan-1 will see the first test flight of the human-rated version of the rocket – the HLVM3. Missions will launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, located on the island of Sriharikota in the state of Andhra Pradesh in the south east of India.

Future plans

Beyond the Gaganyaan mission, ISRO plans to put a space station in orbit – the Bharatiya Antariksh Station. Current plans would see the first module put into orbit in 2028, with the station due to be completed by 2035. Should these plans go ahead, it would certainly cement India’s position as an increasingly important player in space exploration, particularly given the expected demise of the International Space Station around 2030.