The first unmanned test
flight of Indian rocket Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), as part
of the country’s human space mission Gaganyaan, will not happen this year, said
officials.
The Indian Space
Research Organisation (ISRO) had planned the first of the two test flights
later this year.
“The first flight of
the rocket as part of Gaganyaan mission will not happen this year (2020),” a
senior ISRO official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told IANS.
While the actual reason
for the delay is not known, perhaps the Covid-19 lockdown had its impact on the
first test flight.
In his address at the
70th Annual General Meeting and National Conference on “Recent Developments in
Aerospace and Defence Technology” organised by Aeronautical Society of India in
February, ISRO chief K. Sivan had said that the “design and engineering of the
launch vehicle and orbital module system for India’s human space flight has
been completed. A series of tests have to be competed to validate the design
and engineering of the systems in 2020”.
As per the original
plans, during the first test flight ISRO would send its humanoid Vyommitra.
The human space flight
demonstration is planned before India’s 75th Independence Day in 2022 and four
Indians are undergoing astronaut training in Russia.
Meanwhile, suspense
continues on the revised date of launch of India’s first Geo Imaging
Satellite-1 (GISAT-1).
On March 4, a day
before the scheduled launch GISAT-1 onboard the GSLV-F10 rocket and hours
before the start of the launch countdown, ISRO announced postponement of the
mission owing to some technical glitch.
