India celebrates “first major milestone” on path to launching astronauts

Enlarge / A forward-facing camera on the top of an Indian booster captured this view of a Gaganyaan test spacecraft firing its abort motor to propel itself off the rocket. (credit: ISRO)

In 2018, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi committed his nation to develop its own capability to send astronauts into orbit, an achievement that would make India the fourth country with an independent human spaceflight program. On Saturday, that ambition moved a step closer to reality with a successful test of the human-rated spacecraft’s launch abort system.

This is the set of rocket motors and parachutes that would be used to propel the spacecraft away from a failing launch vehicle, a dramatic maneuver that would save the lives of everyone on board. By all accounts, Indian officials were thrilled with the outcome of the test flight.

“We have started the journey of Gaganyaan with this maiden launch of the test vehicle abort sequence, and this will be repeated multiple times under different conditions,” said Sreedhara Somanath, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization. “Also, we’ll have an unmanned Gaganyaan vehicle (orbital) mission soon, at the beginning of the next year.”