Gaganyaan
The primary mandate of HSFC is to spearhead ISRO’s Gaganyaan programme through co-ordinated efforts and focus all the activities that are carried out in other ISRO centres, research labs in India, Indian academia and Industries towards accomplishing the mission. HSFC, as the lead Centre for Human space flight activities conforms to high standards of reliability and human safety in undertaking R&D activities in new technology areas, such as life support systems, Human Factors Engineering, Bioastronautics, Crew training and Human rating & certification. These areas would constitute important components for future sustained human space flight activities like rendezvous and docking, space station building and interplanetary collaborative manned missions to Moon/Mars and near-earth asteroids.
- Gaganyaan project envisages demonstration of human spaceflight capability by launching crew of 3 members to an orbit of 400 km for a 3 days mission and bring them back safely to earth, by landing in Indian sea waters.
- The project is accomplished through an optimal strategy by considering inhouse expertise, experience of Indian industry, intellectual capabilities of Indian academia & research institutions along with cutting edge technologies available with international agencies. The pre-requisites for Gaganyaan mission include development of many critical technologies including human rated launch vehicle for carrying crew safely to space, Life Support System to provide an earth like environment to crew in space, crew emergency escape provision and evolving crew management aspects for training, recovery and rehabilitation of crew.
- Various precursor missions are planned for demonstrating the Technology Preparedness Levels before carrying out the actual Human Space Flight mission. These demonstrator missions include Integrated Air Drop Test (IADT), Pad Abort Test (PAT) and Test Vehicle (TV) flights. Safety and reliability of all systems will be proven in unmanned missions preceding manned mission.
