First abort mission of ‘Gaganyaan’ to be conducted in August-end: ISRO chairman

Ahmedabad (Gujarat) [India], June 22 (ANI): The first abort mission for India's maiden human spaceflight 'Gaganyaan' would be conducted at the end of August this year, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), S Somanath, said here on Thursday.
The ISRO Chairman also said that 'the unmanned mission to orbit' would take place next year,
Talking to media persons on the sidelines of an event at the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) here, he said the test vehicle is ready at Sriharikota and the assembly work of the crew module and crew escape system has also begun.
Somanth was present at the PRL inauguration ceremony of One Peta Flop (1 PF) High-Performance Computing (HPC) Facility where he talked about Gaganyan and the future projects of ISRO.
"For Gaganyaan, the first and foremost thing is that the abort mission has to be done. For that, we have made a new rocket called a test vehicle, which is ready at Sriharikota. Assemblies of the crew module and crew escape system are just getting ready," Somanath told reporters when asked about the latest update on Gaganyaan.
He further said, "So I am informed that this month-end it will go for a fully functional testing, vibration testing, etc. So we are hoping that in August-end or so we will be able to fire the launch of this crew abort mission. Then it will be followed by a repeat mission with different conditions of abort. This is planned for this year."
He added that the 'unmanned mission to the orbit' as part of the project will take place around the beginning of the next year
When asked about the major challenges of this mission, the ISRO chief said the safety of crew members was the most important aspect of the Gaganyaan project.
"Since humans will be part of the mission, crew safety becomes paramount. For that, we are doing two more additional things, one is called the crew escape system. It means if a contingency is developed in the rocket, the system should get activated. The second one is the integrated vehicle health management system," he said. (ANI)