India’s space program has been very active over the past few years and following the success of Chandrayaan-3 & Aditya missions, India became the 4th nation to dock two satellites in space earlier this month. The next major mission ISRO is planning is the Gaganyaan mission. Gaganyaan (“Orbital Vehicle”) is a crewed orbital spacecraft intended to be the basis of the Indian Human Spaceflight Programme. The first of three flight tests prior to the inaugural of crewed mission is planned for December 2025. But before that there are multiple tests & launches planned for testing the equipment and earlier this week, ISRO successfully completed its first Integrated Air Drop Test for Gaganyaan Missions. An air drop test recreates the final leg of a spacecraft’s journey back to Earth by dropping the spacecraft from a height to test various systems under different circumstances.
In Gaganyaan missions, parachute-based Deceleration system is employed during terminal phase of Crew Module (CM) descent to reduce the touchdown velocity of Crew Module to an acceptable limit for safe landing on sea. The parachute system and its layout, for IADT, was same as that of Gaganyaan missions. It comprised of four types of parachutes viz. Apex Cover Separation (ACS) (Ø 2.5 m – 2 nos), Drogue (Ø5.8 m – 2nos), Pilot (Ø3.4 m – 3 nos.) and Main parachutes (Ø 25 m – 3nos.).
In IADT-01, the simulated Crew module (~4.8 t) with Parachute system was released from an altitude of about 3 km using Indian Air Force’s Chinook Heavy lift helicopter. The deceleration system initiation began with firing of ACS Mortar which deploys the Ø2.5 m ACS parachutes, which is followed by the separation of Apex cover. The deployed ACS parachutes then decelerated the Apex cover and prevented it from re-contacting the descending simulated CM during the test. The Ø5.8 m Drogue parachutes were then deployed using Drogue Mortar, which provided first stage deceleration to the simulated crew module. After first stage deceleration, the Drogue parachutes were released using pyro-based parachute releasers. This was followed by firing of three Pilot Mortars, which ejected and deployed the Ø3.4 m Pilot parachutes., which then independently extracted and deployed the three Main parachutes of Ø25 m diameter.
Now that we have successfully cleared the first integrated drop test, work on the second test mission in the third quarter of 2025 is moving at a fast pace. This second test will simulate an abort scenario to demo the crew escape system for the Gaganyaan. After this, in Q4 2025 the first uncrewed mission Gaganyaan-1 will take place, which will carry an unpressurised crew module to space and back. Two more uncrewed test flights are planned in early 2026 for additional testing of equipment which will be followed by a crewed mission in Q3/Q4 2026.
Looking forward to more successful missions by ISRO.
– Suramay