As the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) celebrates Saturday’s successful Test Vehicle-D1 (TV-D1) mission, the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre (LPSC) at Valiamala here is happy with the way the propulsion system it designed for the mission has performed.
The propulsion system on TV-D1 gave a “perfect performance as expected” during the entire duration of the mission, senior ISRO scientist and LPSC Director V. Narayanan, back in Thiruvananthapuram from Sriharikota, told The Hindu on Sunday. The ‘technical glitch’ that delayed the launch on Saturday had been quickly tracked to a “small error” in monitoring the health parameters of the mission, he said.
One of the several test missions planned ahead of the Gaganyaan human spaceflight mission, this mission successfully demonstrated in-flight abort capability and recovery of the crew escape system (CES). The ISRO will now use this single-stage test vehicle to demonstrate CES capabilities at varying altitudes and Mach speeds, Dr. Narayanan said. In the TV-D1 mission, the CES separated from the vehicle at an altitude of 11.8 km on achieving Mach 1.2 speed.
