The Gaganyaan TV-D1's Crew Escape Systems and Crew Module made a safe touchdown on Bay of Bengal after which scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation broke into a celebration, about 10 km from the eastern coast of Sriharikota from where it was launched. The first uncrewed flight mission of the Gaganyaan programme was launched by the ISRO on Saturday at 10:00 am IST.
Known as Test Vehicle Development Flight (TV-D1) or Test Vehicle Abort Flight, the mission, carrying an uncrewed Crew Module and a Crew Escape System, took off from the First Launch Pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Andhra Pradesh's Sriharikota.
"I am very happy to announce the successful accomplishment of Gaganyaan TV-D1 mission" ISRO chief S Somnath announced.
"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," he said.
He further added, "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. and we have a confirmation of the data for all of this."
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ISRO took to X, formerly Twitter, and posted, "Mission Gaganyaan. TV D1 Test Flight is accomplished. Crew Escape System performed as intended. Mission Gaganyaan gets off on a successful note."
The lift-off came after an earlier mission was put on hold due to weather. ISRO later said that they had identified and corrected the problem and the launch had been rescheduled to 10: 00 am.