The amount used for HSP is a small fraction of our budget but what it will do is jump start various programs and related development.It will force GSLV Mk3 production and upgradation on a war footing.All this will have spinoffs in other departments too. This goal and challenge is how great nations are made.
Indian Human Spaceflight Program (HSP)
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India to explore Space Tourism soon: ISRO chairman K Sivan
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman on Thursday said that India need to explore space tourism.
Image Courtesy: ANI
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman on Thursday said that India need to explore space tourism.
Image Courtesy: ANI
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Inside India’s ambitious mission to put its astronauts in space
Sullurpeta, in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh is an average Indian small town with a busy local market area, rudimentary tea and coffee shops, and the occasional cow roaming the streets.
Located on the country’s eastern coast, a little over an hour’s train journey north of the bustling city of Chennai, Sullurpeta is the gateway to the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) main rocket launch facility: the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, or the Sriharikota Range.
Those employed here might live a dull countryside life, but are keenly aware of the importance of the work they do, a space engineer in his fifties tells Quartz.
Their work itself is not conspicuous, though—one must look closely for the unimpressive mural of a shooting rocket near the town’s entry point.
The main road to the launch centre leads through a causeway on a now half-dry Pulicat Lake. Near the facility’s main gate, construction workers—all local villagers—have just finished refurbishing the vehicle park; others sluggishly work on three rocket miniatures newly placed in front of the gate.
But all this is merely the deceptive calm before the storm.
In August, prime minister Narendra Modi announced that, in about four years, India will launch Gaganyaan, its first manned space mission. If successful, it would make India only the fourth member (after Russia, the US, and China) of an elite club of nations with indigenous manned space programmes.
Sullurpeta’s scientists and engineers have been preparing for a decade for this historic mission.
Why a manned mission?
Gopalan Madhavan Nair, ISRO’s former chief, says the idea of a manned space mission works from a long-term perspective.
“(Human spaceflight) is not a prestige-building mission. It will enable ISRO to achieve higher levels of reliability in launch and satellite technology. This will enhance the capability of observing galactic phenomena and the earth. Spin-off benefits, especially in medical science, will be of significance,” Nair told Quartz.
It is a natural evolution of what the country has achieved so far, according to Mylswamy Annadurai, the man behind several satellite and planetary missions, who has served as director of the ISRO Satellite Centre in Bengaluru. It will let India contribute to international spaceflight as space exploration needs to be a collaborative effort among nations, he said.
“Globally, there is a need for several national crewed vehicle programmes. Since the American Space Shuttle is grounded, the Russian Soyuz is the only vehicle capable of carrying humans to space. Human spaceflight would cease without it,” Annadurai argued.
In the future, he said, India should take part in the construction of an international lunar base, an idea promoted by both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).
Wing commander (retired) Rakesh Sharma, the only Indian to have been to space till date, agrees.
“Humans will go back to the moon anyway. Only a handful of nations will take us there. If India becomes a full-fledged space power by having all the capabilities of the developed space-faring countries, then its voice cannot be ignored while international policies dealing with space governance issues are being drawn up,” Sharma said.
50 years in the making
On a calm morning in early July this year, a 14-tonne unmanned prototype capsule flew down on parachutes to safely land some three kilometres into the sea. The entire test, from lift-off to landing, lasted just under five minutes, but for the engineers managing it, this was a great deal: the emergency escape system, a critical technology for a manned spaceflight, worked almost flawlessly.
This, however, wasn’t the only key technology to have been tested for Gaganyaan (Sanskrit for “sky craft”). The ISRO team has, among other things, tested prototypes of the crew module, a space suit, and the launch vehicle, the GSLV Mk3 rocket.
The decade-long preparations—and Rs173 crore (about $23.5 million) spent so far—apart, the manned spaceflight programme marks a milestone in ISRO’s evolution over 50 years.
India’s space ambitions sprouted in the 1960s. Vikram Sarabhai, the father of the country’s space programme and ISRO founder, formulated its main objective: self-reliance in space technology to meet national development goals.
By the 1980s, ISRO had constructed two satellite systems: the Indian National Satellite System (popularly INSAT) that served mostly telecommunications, broadcasting and meteorological purposes; and the Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellite system that monitors resources, does Earth science and reconnaissance.
The programme has dozens of real-life applications: weather forecasting, monitoring the borders, crops, and forests, mapping resources and fishing zones, urban planning, ATM connectivity, search and rescue operations, anti-terrorist and anti-spy missions, disaster warning, and telemedicine.
Given India’s size, building the national space programme was a necessity, as all these services are as basic as air, water, shelter, education, and food, says Susmita Mohanty, CEO of Earth2Orbit, a Bengaluru-based consulting firm and space startup. “In a world of constant political bullying and embargo regimes, it makes perfect sense for countries to be technologically independent and self-reliant,” Mohanty said.
ISRO says it has received around 270 patents and transferred over 300 technologies to industries. This includes electronic systems, speciality polymer materials, and mechanical equipment.
Vikram Sarabhai had stressed that India didn’t fancy competing with advanced economies in manned spaceflight.
“Materials used in rocketry have applications in medicine. And I am not talking about developed countries; it happens here, in India,” says Arun Ram, a space journalist and the Chennai resident editor of The Times of India newspaper.
Ram cites the example of APJ Abdul Kalam, a rocket scientist and former Indian president, who helped develop a new type of a coronary stent, a device placed in arteries to supply blood to the heart. The material used for its production was high-grade rocket steel. Kalam’s work on military missiles also led to the development of ultra-light callipers, which helps polio-affected patients walk.
Thus, for a long time, India used its space capabilities for the benefit of common citizens. “Nobody in India questions the need of launching satellites anymore,” said Ram.
Yet, India’s space programme failed to fire people’s imagination. After all, Sarabhai had stressed that India didn’t fancy competing with the advanced economies in planetary exploration or manned spaceflight.
However, in recent years, ISRO has begun rewriting its founder’s vision.
In 2008, it put a probe, Chandrayaan-1, on the lunar orbit. It became the first spacecraft to discover water on moon. It was a breakthrough for ISRO’s ambitions, too. “We graduated from a regular space-faring nation to the prestigious league occupied by NASA, ESA, and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency),” said Annadurai, the mission’s project director.
Six years later, ISRO’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) hit the headlines not just because of its effectiveness but also because it was the first time a probe was placed in Mars’s orbit in the very first attempt.
The mission was also praised for its low cost: an equivalent of $74 million, compared with the $671 million NASA spent on the MAVEN orbiter launched around the same time. (To be fair, Mangalyaan was primarily a technology demonstrator while MAVEN was far more technologically advanced.)
Now, Chandrayaan-2 is scheduled to launch early next year after being delayed twice. Two other projects, a sun study spacecraft and a Venusian orbiter, are also in the pipeline.
Challenges galore
ISRO chief Kailasavadivoo Sivan has said that conducting two unmanned and one crewed mission, taking three astronauts to a low-earth orbit for about a week, would cost around Rs9,000 crore (around $1.2 billion). This is higher than ISRO’s entire annual budget of $1.1 billion (for 2018).
Clearly, it won’t come as cheap as MOM.
Sivan’s figure, though, is just a little lower than what China spent on its early Shenzhou missions.
Before any flight happens, ISRO will have to put all the technologies to work together and test them to reach the desired accuracy. The most important pieces it still doesn’t have are the life support system and heat shields for atmospheric re-entry. And modifying the launchpad in Sriharikota, building a mission control centre plus selecting and training the crew seems to be the easy part.
According to the plan, the astronauts will have to be ready by 2022. “I feel it is all doable with a slight time overrun, if at all,” Sharma says.
ISRO’s Gaganyaan astronauts will be initially trained abroad. Sharma agrees it is a sensible way to crunch time schedule before building indigenous infrastructure. “Final training, specific to spacecraft systems, can then be done in India,” said Sharma, who flew aboard the Soviet Union’s Soyuz T-11 on April 02, 1984.
Meanwhile, India’s space engineers are not losing their focus on good old satellites either. “We will have to place new generations of hardware up on the orbit. The government alone will require us to send over 40 satellites in the next three years. Previously, we made two or three per year. Now it has grown to about 10,” says Annadurai.
The agency lacks human resources for all these, so it badly needs the industry to step in.
Recently, ISRO announced it will let private companies integrate 27 large orbiters. It is the only way to get enough manpower, says Mohanty. “ISRO should have begun privatising routine activities such as satellite fabrication and PSLV rocket assembly at least a decade ago. It should focus on R&D and new areas such as planetary exploration and human space flight. Plus, some of its budget should be allocated to providing a robust financial ecosystem to support entrepreneurial ventures leading to job creation and innovation.”
Meanwhile, attempts to monetise ISRO’s expertise have borne fruit, too. Antrix Corporation, the agency’s commercial arm, has found favour in the global satellite launch market and kept the revenue counter ticking. Since 1999, it has placed in orbit 239 foreign satellites for customers from 28 countries. For the financial year that ended March 31, 2017, Antrix reported an income of Rs1,991 crore (pdf).
Launching manned missions is just the beginning of a new chapter for ISRO. It opens up interest in space that could help attract more youngsters to its fold and help the agency find its apogee.
Sullurpeta, then, might finally outgrow its small-town status.
Sullurpeta, in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh is an average Indian small town with a busy local market area, rudimentary tea and coffee shops, and the occasional cow roaming the streets.
Located on the country’s eastern coast, a little over an hour’s train journey north of the bustling city of Chennai, Sullurpeta is the gateway to the Indian Space Research Organisation’s (ISRO) main rocket launch facility: the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, or the Sriharikota Range.
Those employed here might live a dull countryside life, but are keenly aware of the importance of the work they do, a space engineer in his fifties tells Quartz.
Their work itself is not conspicuous, though—one must look closely for the unimpressive mural of a shooting rocket near the town’s entry point.
The main road to the launch centre leads through a causeway on a now half-dry Pulicat Lake. Near the facility’s main gate, construction workers—all local villagers—have just finished refurbishing the vehicle park; others sluggishly work on three rocket miniatures newly placed in front of the gate.
But all this is merely the deceptive calm before the storm.
In August, prime minister Narendra Modi announced that, in about four years, India will launch Gaganyaan, its first manned space mission. If successful, it would make India only the fourth member (after Russia, the US, and China) of an elite club of nations with indigenous manned space programmes.
Sullurpeta’s scientists and engineers have been preparing for a decade for this historic mission.
Why a manned mission?
Gopalan Madhavan Nair, ISRO’s former chief, says the idea of a manned space mission works from a long-term perspective.
“(Human spaceflight) is not a prestige-building mission. It will enable ISRO to achieve higher levels of reliability in launch and satellite technology. This will enhance the capability of observing galactic phenomena and the earth. Spin-off benefits, especially in medical science, will be of significance,” Nair told Quartz.
It is a natural evolution of what the country has achieved so far, according to Mylswamy Annadurai, the man behind several satellite and planetary missions, who has served as director of the ISRO Satellite Centre in Bengaluru. It will let India contribute to international spaceflight as space exploration needs to be a collaborative effort among nations, he said.
“Globally, there is a need for several national crewed vehicle programmes. Since the American Space Shuttle is grounded, the Russian Soyuz is the only vehicle capable of carrying humans to space. Human spaceflight would cease without it,” Annadurai argued.
In the future, he said, India should take part in the construction of an international lunar base, an idea promoted by both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).
Wing commander (retired) Rakesh Sharma, the only Indian to have been to space till date, agrees.
“Humans will go back to the moon anyway. Only a handful of nations will take us there. If India becomes a full-fledged space power by having all the capabilities of the developed space-faring countries, then its voice cannot be ignored while international policies dealing with space governance issues are being drawn up,” Sharma said.
50 years in the making
On a calm morning in early July this year, a 14-tonne unmanned prototype capsule flew down on parachutes to safely land some three kilometres into the sea. The entire test, from lift-off to landing, lasted just under five minutes, but for the engineers managing it, this was a great deal: the emergency escape system, a critical technology for a manned spaceflight, worked almost flawlessly.
This, however, wasn’t the only key technology to have been tested for Gaganyaan (Sanskrit for “sky craft”). The ISRO team has, among other things, tested prototypes of the crew module, a space suit, and the launch vehicle, the GSLV Mk3 rocket.
The decade-long preparations—and Rs173 crore (about $23.5 million) spent so far—apart, the manned spaceflight programme marks a milestone in ISRO’s evolution over 50 years.
India’s space ambitions sprouted in the 1960s. Vikram Sarabhai, the father of the country’s space programme and ISRO founder, formulated its main objective: self-reliance in space technology to meet national development goals.
By the 1980s, ISRO had constructed two satellite systems: the Indian National Satellite System (popularly INSAT) that served mostly telecommunications, broadcasting and meteorological purposes; and the Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellite system that monitors resources, does Earth science and reconnaissance.
The programme has dozens of real-life applications: weather forecasting, monitoring the borders, crops, and forests, mapping resources and fishing zones, urban planning, ATM connectivity, search and rescue operations, anti-terrorist and anti-spy missions, disaster warning, and telemedicine.
Given India’s size, building the national space programme was a necessity, as all these services are as basic as air, water, shelter, education, and food, says Susmita Mohanty, CEO of Earth2Orbit, a Bengaluru-based consulting firm and space startup. “In a world of constant political bullying and embargo regimes, it makes perfect sense for countries to be technologically independent and self-reliant,” Mohanty said.
ISRO says it has received around 270 patents and transferred over 300 technologies to industries. This includes electronic systems, speciality polymer materials, and mechanical equipment.
Vikram Sarabhai had stressed that India didn’t fancy competing with advanced economies in manned spaceflight.
“Materials used in rocketry have applications in medicine. And I am not talking about developed countries; it happens here, in India,” says Arun Ram, a space journalist and the Chennai resident editor of The Times of India newspaper.
Ram cites the example of APJ Abdul Kalam, a rocket scientist and former Indian president, who helped develop a new type of a coronary stent, a device placed in arteries to supply blood to the heart. The material used for its production was high-grade rocket steel. Kalam’s work on military missiles also led to the development of ultra-light callipers, which helps polio-affected patients walk.
Thus, for a long time, India used its space capabilities for the benefit of common citizens. “Nobody in India questions the need of launching satellites anymore,” said Ram.
Yet, India’s space programme failed to fire people’s imagination. After all, Sarabhai had stressed that India didn’t fancy competing with the advanced economies in planetary exploration or manned spaceflight.
However, in recent years, ISRO has begun rewriting its founder’s vision.
In 2008, it put a probe, Chandrayaan-1, on the lunar orbit. It became the first spacecraft to discover water on moon. It was a breakthrough for ISRO’s ambitions, too. “We graduated from a regular space-faring nation to the prestigious league occupied by NASA, ESA, and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency),” said Annadurai, the mission’s project director.
Six years later, ISRO’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) hit the headlines not just because of its effectiveness but also because it was the first time a probe was placed in Mars’s orbit in the very first attempt.
The mission was also praised for its low cost: an equivalent of $74 million, compared with the $671 million NASA spent on the MAVEN orbiter launched around the same time. (To be fair, Mangalyaan was primarily a technology demonstrator while MAVEN was far more technologically advanced.)
Now, Chandrayaan-2 is scheduled to launch early next year after being delayed twice. Two other projects, a sun study spacecraft and a Venusian orbiter, are also in the pipeline.
Challenges galore
ISRO chief Kailasavadivoo Sivan has said that conducting two unmanned and one crewed mission, taking three astronauts to a low-earth orbit for about a week, would cost around Rs9,000 crore (around $1.2 billion). This is higher than ISRO’s entire annual budget of $1.1 billion (for 2018).
Clearly, it won’t come as cheap as MOM.
Sivan’s figure, though, is just a little lower than what China spent on its early Shenzhou missions.
Before any flight happens, ISRO will have to put all the technologies to work together and test them to reach the desired accuracy. The most important pieces it still doesn’t have are the life support system and heat shields for atmospheric re-entry. And modifying the launchpad in Sriharikota, building a mission control centre plus selecting and training the crew seems to be the easy part.
According to the plan, the astronauts will have to be ready by 2022. “I feel it is all doable with a slight time overrun, if at all,” Sharma says.
ISRO’s Gaganyaan astronauts will be initially trained abroad. Sharma agrees it is a sensible way to crunch time schedule before building indigenous infrastructure. “Final training, specific to spacecraft systems, can then be done in India,” said Sharma, who flew aboard the Soviet Union’s Soyuz T-11 on April 02, 1984.
Meanwhile, India’s space engineers are not losing their focus on good old satellites either. “We will have to place new generations of hardware up on the orbit. The government alone will require us to send over 40 satellites in the next three years. Previously, we made two or three per year. Now it has grown to about 10,” says Annadurai.
The agency lacks human resources for all these, so it badly needs the industry to step in.
Recently, ISRO announced it will let private companies integrate 27 large orbiters. It is the only way to get enough manpower, says Mohanty. “ISRO should have begun privatising routine activities such as satellite fabrication and PSLV rocket assembly at least a decade ago. It should focus on R&D and new areas such as planetary exploration and human space flight. Plus, some of its budget should be allocated to providing a robust financial ecosystem to support entrepreneurial ventures leading to job creation and innovation.”
Meanwhile, attempts to monetise ISRO’s expertise have borne fruit, too. Antrix Corporation, the agency’s commercial arm, has found favour in the global satellite launch market and kept the revenue counter ticking. Since 1999, it has placed in orbit 239 foreign satellites for customers from 28 countries. For the financial year that ended March 31, 2017, Antrix reported an income of Rs1,991 crore (pdf).
Launching manned missions is just the beginning of a new chapter for ISRO. It opens up interest in space that could help attract more youngsters to its fold and help the agency find its apogee.
Sullurpeta, then, might finally outgrow its small-town status.
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Two international astronauts survive space scare. How well is India prepared?
The Indian Space Research Organisation is preparing to become the fourth country to launch a human into space — after Russia, the US and China.
GSLV Mk III; it will need a human ratings certification before it can launch a human into space. (ISRO)
AMID INDIA’s preparations for a manned space mission, the recent failure of a Russian rocket launch has served a reminder of the perils and technological challenges involved in every space flight. The fact that both astronauts on board survived the failure, on the other hand, has been hailed as an example that underlines the safety measures that were in place. How are Indian scientists progressing on astronaut safety?
What failed
On October 11, the failure of the Russian rocket Soyuz FG led to the abortion of Expedition 57 to the International Space Station. On board the Soyuz MS 10 mission were Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos and Nick Hague of NASA. When the failure was detected at an altitude of 50 km, an emergency operation was carried out to separate the crew module. The astronauts landed on Earth some 402 km from the launch site at the Russian Baikonur cosmodrome.
It was the first mid-flight failure of a Soyuz rocket since 1975, when a mission was aborted after the second stage failed to fire while was climbing to leave Earth’s atmosphere, with crew on board.
Since the first successful human space flight in 1961 by Yuri Gagarin, 18 astronauts (13 Americans, 4 Russians, 1 Israeli) have lost their lives on space missions. The rocket, the crew module and all systems involved require a “human ratings certification” before they can be used to send a human into space.
The Soyuz rocket carrying the two astronauts at liftoff (Photo from Russian space agency @roscosmos)
ISRO at work
The Indian Space Research Organisation is preparing to become the fourth country to launch a human into space — after Russia, the US and China. Its Gaganyaan mission was given a 2022 deadline by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 15.
“We are now moving rockets from a mission-critical nature to a safety-critical launch nature, where the human being comes into play in a rocket — where human life becomes more important. We need to build safety critical features into rockets,” S Somnath, director of ISRO’s Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, said recently while providing an overview of ISRO’s early plans. Somnath is a key figure in the development of the GSLV Mk III rocket, which will be used for the manned mission.
“The crew escape system is crucial to the mission. The principle here is that you can have a less reliable rocket but you need a highly reliable crew escape system,” Somnath said. “The most important part of a human space flight is the ability to detect an imminent danger and take action to abort the mission. We need to have systems for this. We need onboard intelligence to see what is happening around and take action if anomalies develop.”
Safety guidelines
A NASA manual on human ratings of space systems, available in the public domain, underlines the difference between the development of systems for human space flights and missions with robotic payloads. “A human-rated system accommodates human needs, effectively utilizes human capabilities, controls hazards and manages safety risk associated with human spaceflight, and provides, to the maximum extent practical, the capability to safely recover the crew from hazardous situations,” states the NASA procedural requirements document for human ratings of space systems.
While designing a rocket to launch any mechanical payload, scientists do not have to consider factors like the amount of heat generated, vibration caused or metallic changes in the payload capsule. For rockets meant to carry humans, all these factors will have to be brought within human tolerance levels.
Like ISRO, private space agencies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Boeing are working to develop human-rated systems that can be certified by 2019. SpaceX’s efforts to get a human ratings certification for its Falcon 9 (Block 5) rocket — which experienced an explosion on the launchpad in 2016 — offer insight on the technical challenges. “The rocket has to be designed to 25% above the worst case of the expected load in the case of a satellite launcher. For a human-rated launcher, it has to be designed 40% above the worst-case loads. That’s really difficult to do without making the rocket really heavy. That’s hardcore stuff,” Musk said in May, after the successful launch of a Falcon 9 rocket with improvements meant for human ratings certifications, such as higher heat resistance and backup electronics.
The Indian rocket
ISRO’s GSLV Mk III, which has undergone one experimental and one developmental flights, is expected to make 10 flights, including two in the form of an unmanned human space launch vehicle, before it finally launches humans in 2022.
Somnath says the GSLV was designed keeping in mind human flight in the future, so it will not need major tweaking. “When the GSLV Mk III was designed in the 2000-2002 time-frame, one of the important aspects that we mentioned was that it must ultimately become a vehicle that takes a human to space. We were directed to keep the design conditions in such a way that acceleration, reliability, safety, vibration and other aspects are all addressed right at the design stage. This is why we are confidently speaking of a human space flight,” Dr Somnath said recently.
“The GSLV Mk III is an intelligent system with built-in redundancies, but for a final human rating the redundancies needed are of a higher order. We are working on it,” he said. “Various aspects of this have already been addressed — the environment, the margins on the hardware, the interface with the launchpad, the redundancy on board and the checking out and clearing the rocket for launch. We are now discussing the algorithms that will go inside in terms of instrumentation and process in a computer and see if we can abort a mission without causing damage to the crew. This aspect is under review and we will be coming out with an architecture where the time-span available is so short.”
While ISRO is confident, some experts have sounded a note of caution. “Any serious follower of ISRO’s programme will understand the huge divide which exists between projections and reality in space technology and space processes. Space operations being glamorous can hide failures against the backdrop of stunning successes,” Air Vice Marshal (retd) Pankaj Tyagi said at an event last month. “While creating perceptions and hype through media management is very important to inspire people, it is also important to reduce knowledge gaps and optimise resources, especially when a human is on board a rocket.”
The Indian Space Research Organisation is preparing to become the fourth country to launch a human into space — after Russia, the US and China.
GSLV Mk III; it will need a human ratings certification before it can launch a human into space. (ISRO)
AMID INDIA’s preparations for a manned space mission, the recent failure of a Russian rocket launch has served a reminder of the perils and technological challenges involved in every space flight. The fact that both astronauts on board survived the failure, on the other hand, has been hailed as an example that underlines the safety measures that were in place. How are Indian scientists progressing on astronaut safety?
What failed
On October 11, the failure of the Russian rocket Soyuz FG led to the abortion of Expedition 57 to the International Space Station. On board the Soyuz MS 10 mission were Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos and Nick Hague of NASA. When the failure was detected at an altitude of 50 km, an emergency operation was carried out to separate the crew module. The astronauts landed on Earth some 402 km from the launch site at the Russian Baikonur cosmodrome.
It was the first mid-flight failure of a Soyuz rocket since 1975, when a mission was aborted after the second stage failed to fire while was climbing to leave Earth’s atmosphere, with crew on board.
Since the first successful human space flight in 1961 by Yuri Gagarin, 18 astronauts (13 Americans, 4 Russians, 1 Israeli) have lost their lives on space missions. The rocket, the crew module and all systems involved require a “human ratings certification” before they can be used to send a human into space.
The Soyuz rocket carrying the two astronauts at liftoff (Photo from Russian space agency @roscosmos)
ISRO at work
The Indian Space Research Organisation is preparing to become the fourth country to launch a human into space — after Russia, the US and China. Its Gaganyaan mission was given a 2022 deadline by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on August 15.
“We are now moving rockets from a mission-critical nature to a safety-critical launch nature, where the human being comes into play in a rocket — where human life becomes more important. We need to build safety critical features into rockets,” S Somnath, director of ISRO’s Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, said recently while providing an overview of ISRO’s early plans. Somnath is a key figure in the development of the GSLV Mk III rocket, which will be used for the manned mission.
“The crew escape system is crucial to the mission. The principle here is that you can have a less reliable rocket but you need a highly reliable crew escape system,” Somnath said. “The most important part of a human space flight is the ability to detect an imminent danger and take action to abort the mission. We need to have systems for this. We need onboard intelligence to see what is happening around and take action if anomalies develop.”
Safety guidelines
A NASA manual on human ratings of space systems, available in the public domain, underlines the difference between the development of systems for human space flights and missions with robotic payloads. “A human-rated system accommodates human needs, effectively utilizes human capabilities, controls hazards and manages safety risk associated with human spaceflight, and provides, to the maximum extent practical, the capability to safely recover the crew from hazardous situations,” states the NASA procedural requirements document for human ratings of space systems.
While designing a rocket to launch any mechanical payload, scientists do not have to consider factors like the amount of heat generated, vibration caused or metallic changes in the payload capsule. For rockets meant to carry humans, all these factors will have to be brought within human tolerance levels.
Like ISRO, private space agencies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Boeing are working to develop human-rated systems that can be certified by 2019. SpaceX’s efforts to get a human ratings certification for its Falcon 9 (Block 5) rocket — which experienced an explosion on the launchpad in 2016 — offer insight on the technical challenges. “The rocket has to be designed to 25% above the worst case of the expected load in the case of a satellite launcher. For a human-rated launcher, it has to be designed 40% above the worst-case loads. That’s really difficult to do without making the rocket really heavy. That’s hardcore stuff,” Musk said in May, after the successful launch of a Falcon 9 rocket with improvements meant for human ratings certifications, such as higher heat resistance and backup electronics.
The Indian rocket
ISRO’s GSLV Mk III, which has undergone one experimental and one developmental flights, is expected to make 10 flights, including two in the form of an unmanned human space launch vehicle, before it finally launches humans in 2022.
Somnath says the GSLV was designed keeping in mind human flight in the future, so it will not need major tweaking. “When the GSLV Mk III was designed in the 2000-2002 time-frame, one of the important aspects that we mentioned was that it must ultimately become a vehicle that takes a human to space. We were directed to keep the design conditions in such a way that acceleration, reliability, safety, vibration and other aspects are all addressed right at the design stage. This is why we are confidently speaking of a human space flight,” Dr Somnath said recently.
“The GSLV Mk III is an intelligent system with built-in redundancies, but for a final human rating the redundancies needed are of a higher order. We are working on it,” he said. “Various aspects of this have already been addressed — the environment, the margins on the hardware, the interface with the launchpad, the redundancy on board and the checking out and clearing the rocket for launch. We are now discussing the algorithms that will go inside in terms of instrumentation and process in a computer and see if we can abort a mission without causing damage to the crew. This aspect is under review and we will be coming out with an architecture where the time-span available is so short.”
While ISRO is confident, some experts have sounded a note of caution. “Any serious follower of ISRO’s programme will understand the huge divide which exists between projections and reality in space technology and space processes. Space operations being glamorous can hide failures against the backdrop of stunning successes,” Air Vice Marshal (retd) Pankaj Tyagi said at an event last month. “While creating perceptions and hype through media management is very important to inspire people, it is also important to reduce knowledge gaps and optimise resources, especially when a human is on board a rocket.”
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Reconfirmation from ISRO
ISRO to send human in space by 2022
K Sivan, Chairman, ISROChandrayan 2 to be completed in 2019
ISRO to send human in space by 2022
K Sivan, Chairman, ISRO
Research and incubation centres
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Nov 07, 2018
Announcement of Opportunity (AO) for Low Earth Orbit based Microgravity Experiments
Highlights from above link:
Next 10 years are going to be exciting for India.
For military, politics, space, economy, lifestyles, perception and international politics.
Long Live DFI, for next 20 years at least. So that we can monitor everything.
Announcement of Opportunity (AO) for Low Earth Orbit based Microgravity Experiments
Highlights from above link:
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So efforts for meeting schedules of Venus & manned mission are ongoing on ground actually. Budget too is higher than ever before.
Next 10 years are going to be exciting for India.
For military, politics, space, economy, lifestyles, perception and international politics.
Long Live DFI, for next 20 years at least. So that we can monitor everything.
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By IndiaToday
It's not just an ISRO project, it's a national one: K Sivan
In an exclusive interview, ISRO chairman Dr K. Sivan tells Group Editorial Director Raj Chengappa about the nuts and bolts of India's first manned space mission.
ISRO chairman Dr K. Sivan (Photo: Reuben Singh)
Q. India will be the fourth nation after the US, Russia and China to launch a manned space mission. What's so special about sending a man into space? Why are we doing it- isn't it a bit like reinventing the wheel?
A. Actually, it's not simply about sending a man into space. The entire country's understanding of science and technology will rise. It will inspire youngsters to do something new and encourage them to participate in science programmes. This particular project has many institutions and industries associated with it. In that sense, it is not just an ISRO project, but a national one. Every Indian agency involved can showcase its skills and the nation can be proud that, in science and technology, we are equal to the developed countries.
Q. What are the big challenges ISRO has to overcome?
A. Whatever technology we have is about launching satellites. But when we launch a human, apart from the engineering and technical aspects, the human element, life sciences, also come in. We have to ensure that the human inside the module is safe and all conditions are similar to those on Earth. Simulating such conditions and creating such an environment is a challenge for us, it is new to us. We have already tried some of these activities, such as environment control and life support systems. We have also done a lot of studies on space suits. Now we need to enhance it.
Q. What kind of training will be needed for an astronaut and who will be eligible?
A. It is not necessary that he or she be a fighter pilot. Anybody can go, provided they are psychologically, physically and mentally fit. Of course, the endurance of fighter pilots will be better than that of others. But we are working on how to select and train them. The Institute of Aerospace Medicine in Bengaluru has the facilities for training astronauts. They had done a similar thing for Rakesh Sharma. But we will need more rigorous training and may have to build capacities for that. Given the target set by the prime minister, 2022, we may need international collaboration and the use of outside facilities and systems.
Q. What about the rocket launcher to boost the capsule into orbit?
A. We already have the capabilities for this. Our GSLV Mark III heavy lift launcher is capable of lifting 10 tonnes of payload into orbit, whereas our space orbiter will weigh only around seven tonnes. While launching regular satellites, our main criteria is maximum payload. But for the manned mission, maximum safety matters more. So the launch vehicle system has to be a human-rated version and we will ensure it is failsafe.
Q. You also need to have an escape system for the crew in case of failure during the launch.
A. We have already built and tested the crew escape system. It's not only during the launch, if there is an exigency or danger to the astronauts at any time during the flight, the module will be ejected from the launch vehicle, away from the danger zone. This involves quick-reacting solid motors and a system to stabilise the vehicle. We have also tested the module for re-entry and recovery after splashdown into the sea, including protecting it from high temperatures and pressures when it re-enters the atmosphere on its return.
Q. Are you planning to test the orbiter with an unmanned mission first?
A. We want to do a couple of end-to-end tests before we launch the orbiter with astronauts. We will have two rehearsal flights to test the environment and life-support systems as well as protection from extreme temperature and pressure variations, apart from galactic cosmic rays and micro-meteorites that may impact the orbiter. We will also do a splashdown of the orbiter. We have to ensure everything is perfect.
Q. What is the total cost of this project? Will it cost less than what other nations spent?
A. It will be Rs 10,000 crore. This is not very high. That is because almost all the critical technology has been developed by us. The vehicle is also already available. Our only remaining job is to build a training facility and infrastructure for the launch.
It's not just an ISRO project, it's a national one: K Sivan
In an exclusive interview, ISRO chairman Dr K. Sivan tells Group Editorial Director Raj Chengappa about the nuts and bolts of India's first manned space mission.
ISRO chairman Dr K. Sivan (Photo: Reuben Singh)
Excerpts:
Q. India will be the fourth nation after the US, Russia and China to launch a manned space mission. What's so special about sending a man into space? Why are we doing it- isn't it a bit like reinventing the wheel?
A. Actually, it's not simply about sending a man into space. The entire country's understanding of science and technology will rise. It will inspire youngsters to do something new and encourage them to participate in science programmes. This particular project has many institutions and industries associated with it. In that sense, it is not just an ISRO project, but a national one. Every Indian agency involved can showcase its skills and the nation can be proud that, in science and technology, we are equal to the developed countries.
Q. What are the big challenges ISRO has to overcome?
A. Whatever technology we have is about launching satellites. But when we launch a human, apart from the engineering and technical aspects, the human element, life sciences, also come in. We have to ensure that the human inside the module is safe and all conditions are similar to those on Earth. Simulating such conditions and creating such an environment is a challenge for us, it is new to us. We have already tried some of these activities, such as environment control and life support systems. We have also done a lot of studies on space suits. Now we need to enhance it.
Q. What kind of training will be needed for an astronaut and who will be eligible?
A. It is not necessary that he or she be a fighter pilot. Anybody can go, provided they are psychologically, physically and mentally fit. Of course, the endurance of fighter pilots will be better than that of others. But we are working on how to select and train them. The Institute of Aerospace Medicine in Bengaluru has the facilities for training astronauts. They had done a similar thing for Rakesh Sharma. But we will need more rigorous training and may have to build capacities for that. Given the target set by the prime minister, 2022, we may need international collaboration and the use of outside facilities and systems.
Q. What about the rocket launcher to boost the capsule into orbit?
A. We already have the capabilities for this. Our GSLV Mark III heavy lift launcher is capable of lifting 10 tonnes of payload into orbit, whereas our space orbiter will weigh only around seven tonnes. While launching regular satellites, our main criteria is maximum payload. But for the manned mission, maximum safety matters more. So the launch vehicle system has to be a human-rated version and we will ensure it is failsafe.
Q. You also need to have an escape system for the crew in case of failure during the launch.
A. We have already built and tested the crew escape system. It's not only during the launch, if there is an exigency or danger to the astronauts at any time during the flight, the module will be ejected from the launch vehicle, away from the danger zone. This involves quick-reacting solid motors and a system to stabilise the vehicle. We have also tested the module for re-entry and recovery after splashdown into the sea, including protecting it from high temperatures and pressures when it re-enters the atmosphere on its return.
Q. Are you planning to test the orbiter with an unmanned mission first?
A. We want to do a couple of end-to-end tests before we launch the orbiter with astronauts. We will have two rehearsal flights to test the environment and life-support systems as well as protection from extreme temperature and pressure variations, apart from galactic cosmic rays and micro-meteorites that may impact the orbiter. We will also do a splashdown of the orbiter. We have to ensure everything is perfect.
Q. What is the total cost of this project? Will it cost less than what other nations spent?
A. It will be Rs 10,000 crore. This is not very high. That is because almost all the critical technology has been developed by us. The vehicle is also already available. Our only remaining job is to build a training facility and infrastructure for the launch.
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Thanks for link @cobra commando.
First Unmanned Mission Under Gaganyaan By December 2020, Says ISRO Chief
The mission team is on track and already the work is going on, says ISRO chief K Sivan.
The mission team is on track, says ISRO chief K Sivan. (File)
First Unmanned Mission Under Gaganyaan By December 2020, Says ISRO Chief
The mission team is on track and already the work is going on, says ISRO chief K Sivan.
The mission team is on track, says ISRO chief K Sivan. (File)
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IDRSS = Indian Data Relay Satellite System
GSLV Mk3 will have a second launch next year after Chandrayaan-2 for validation of crew module.
From: https://english.manoramaonline.com/...y-new-beginnings-for-indian-space-sector.html
Next 5-7 years are going to be great for India militarily, in space, economically and even regarding reputation because Census 2021 will change India's reputation.
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Along with Human space flight, it would be helpful in our future interplanetary expeditions too. Hope Venus mission would get much needed help from it.
kunal1123
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why????
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Socio economic indicators have been dramatically improved in this decade with illiteracy below 20%, poverty ratio below 5%, half of population having acceess to integnet & most regarding international coverage, technological milestones & India's foreign policy.
Census 2021 will officially update India's socio economic picture and 2011 days of lower middle income won't be cited again.
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Three Indians to be sent to space as part of Gaganyaan project
The Union Cabinet on Friday approved the Gaganyaan project under which a three-member crew will be sent to space for at least seven days, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said. The project will cost 10,000 crore, he said at a press conference in New Delhi. The Gaganyaan project was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech earlier this year. He had said the mission will be undertaken by 2022. India has already inked agreements with Russia and France for assistance in this project.
Three Indians to be sent to space as part of Gaganyaan project
The Union Cabinet on Friday approved the Gaganyaan project under which a three-member crew will be sent to space for at least seven days, Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said. The project will cost 10,000 crore, he said at a press conference in New Delhi. The Gaganyaan project was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day speech earlier this year. He had said the mission will be undertaken by 2022. India has already inked agreements with Russia and France for assistance in this project.
Three Indians to be sent to space as part of Gaganyaan project
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Hope census 2021 don't bring hindu below 75 you know what I mean and no hard feelings to our muslim friends they know their religion is used for teerorism, yet they see these terrorists as their unofficial fighting army.
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It's bound to happen.............
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Isro to build 3 sets of rockets, crew modules for Gaganyaan
Cabinet approved Rs 10,000-crore budget to Isro for the human space mission
HIGHLIGHTS
Cabinet approved Rs 10,000-crore budget to Isro for the human space mission
HIGHLIGHTS
- Human-rating says the system is capable of safely transporting humans
- At least 50% of the Rs 10,000 crore will go into human-rating
- The escape system will boast of a recently included geometry, while work on parachute enlargement and new architecture will be ready soon
Astronaut training
