There were two important forerunners to the success of the Test Vehicle Abort Mission (TV-D1) flight that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) conducted on October 21. During the test, an uncrewed crew module was brought back safely to the earth after launching it on a small rocket and simulating an emergency abort command. The test and its forerunners are ISRO’s first major steps towards launching humans to orbit as part of its ‘Gaganyaan’ mission.
The TV-D1 test was carried out smoothly, especially given that ISRO had to overcome a glitch five seconds before lift-off at 8.45 am, when the ground computer, called the Automatic Launch Sequence, halted the lift-off. ISRO Chairman S. Somanath said it issued a “hold” when it detected a non-conformity “for allowing the engine to continue thrusting to further go. This happened due to a monitoring anomaly in the system.” He added: “We could identify [the anomaly] very, very fast and correct it … It took us some time to refill the gases…”, after which the launch was rescheduled for 10 am.
The first forerunner to the TV-D1 mission was ISRO’s Space Capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE-1). An orbiting satellite called SRE was brought back to the earth on January 22, 2007, after a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) had placed it in orbit on January 10. In a series of manoeuvres, the shuttlecock-shaped SRE came down from an altitude of 635 km to splash down into the Bay of Bengal, 140 km from Sriharikota, where the Coast Guard recovered it. India thus successfully brought back an orbiting satellite in its first attempt.
