How to watch ISRO’s Gaganyaan vehicle test flight on Saturday

Here is how you can watch ISRO's TV-D1 Test Flight mission that will test the crew module's mid-flight crew escape system,

By: Science Desk

Kochi | October 19, 2023 07:50 PM IST

2 min read

The launch vehicle for the Gaganyaan TV-D1 Test Flight at Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota. (ISRO via X.com)

Listen to this article

Your browser does not support the audio element.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is set to conduct a Gaganyaan vehicle test flight at 7.30 AM IST on Saturday, October 21. During the test, an early version of the Gaganyaan crew module will be taken to a height of 17 kilometres to test its mid-flight crew escape system.

ISRO will be livestreaming the test flight through various platforms, including its own website, Facebook and YouTube. You can watch it through the livestream below. In case you would like to watch it on TV, the mission will be broadcast live on DD National.

During the TV-D1 Test Flight on Saturday, a single-stage liquid propellant-based rocket will carry an unpressurised version of the crew module. Teams from the space agency and the Indian Navy will also practice recovery of the crew module after it splashes down in the Bay of Bengal.

With the success of the Chandrayaan-3 mission, India joined an exclusive list of a few countries that can soft-land a spacecraft on the Moon. The list includes the United States, the erstwhile Soviet Union and China. With the Gaganyaan mission, the country strives to do something even more impressive. Only three nations so far have launched their own crewed spacecraft—the same three countries in the above list.

Also read | How Queen’s guitarist Brian May helped NASA analyse asteroid Bennu

ISRO plans to enter India into that list with the Gaganyaan mission. If all goes well, it will demonstrate the country’s human spaceflight capability by launching a crewed spacecraft to an a 400-kilometre orbit for a three day mission, and then bringing them safely back to Earth by landing in Indian sea waters.

The TV-D1 Test Flight is one of the many precursor missions that will test many of the systems that will be used during the actual mission. While the test flight is using a single-stage test vehicle that uses just one Vikas engine, the actual mission will be launched by the same LVM3 (Launch Vehicle Mark-3) that launched the Chandrayaan-3 mission.

From the homepage