Sriharikota: Congratulating the scientists over the successful launch of the Gaganyaan first test vehicle on Saturday morning, soon after it was postponed due to a glitch, ISRO chief S Somanath explained the issue detected which hindered the scheduled lift-off of the Gaganyaan TV-D1.
The ISRO chief hailed the team for their work in understanding and rectifying the glitch fast and said that it was a big training for the team to prepare for the Gaganyaan programme.
“I am happy that our team could understand and rectify the anomaly fast. Congratulations to everybody. This is a big training for the team here to prepare for the Gaganyaan programme,” he said in his address after the successful test.
The test was initially scheduled to be held at 8 am today which was postponed to 8.30 and then again to 8.45 am due to bad weather. With five seconds to go for the lift-off, the launch was halted due to the glitch.
Somanath explains glitch
Explaining the error, the ISRO chief said, “After going through the nominal lift-off process, there was a bolt issued by the ground computer which detected non-conformance for allowing the engine to continue the thrusting to further go. This happened due to a monitoring anomaly in the system. So we could identify very fast and corrected. To make the stage ready, it took some time to refill the gases. Once that was completed, we went through the proper automatic launch sequence which checked the entire health of the vehicle and finally the mission computer authorised the launch to take off which released the rocket from the launchpad.”
"I am very happy to announce the successful accomplishment of the TV-D1 mission. The purpose of this mission was to demonstrate the crew escape system for the Gaganyaan program through a test vehicle demonstration in which the vehicle went up to a Mach number, which is slightly above the speed of sound and initiated an abort condition for the crew escape system to function. The crew escape system took the crew module away from the vehicle and subsequent operations including the touch-down at the sea have been very well accomplished. and we have a confirmation of the data for all of this," he said.
The three main parachutes of Gaganyaan TV-D1 deployed after the successful test vehicle launch.
The crew module of Gaganyaan TV-D1 has safely landed in the Bay of Bengal.
What ISRO chief said after initial glitch?
"The lift-off attempt of TV-D1 could not happen today. Initially, the launch was scheduled at 8 am, but there was the postponement of the lift-off time due to the weather situation. We had a smooth ALS (Automatic Launch Sequence), leading up to the command to lift-off the engine, but the engine ignition has not happened in the nominal course. We have to find out what went wrong with that. We will come back soon after analysing what has triggered the Automatic Launch Sequence, holding the vehicle," says ISRO chief S Somanath on Gaganyaan TV-D1 test vehicle launch," Somanath said earlier today.
(With inputs from agencies)
