ISRO Orbital Vehicle

History

The development of the Orbital Vehicle began in 2006. The plan was to design a simple vessel similar to the Mercury-class spacecraft with an endurance of about a week in space. It was designed to carry two astronauts and to land in water upon re-entry. The design was finalized by March 2008, and was submitted to the Government of India for funding. The funding for the Indian Human Spaceflight program was sanctioned in February 2009. Initially, the first unmanned flight of the Orbital Vehicle was expected to be in 2013.

ISRO based the Orbital Vehicle on the design of the SRE. ISRO had launched and recovered the 550-kg Space Recovery Capsule in January 2007. The full-scale manned OV spaceship was said to be derived from this, although ISRO's published concept showed a more elongated conical shape than the SRE.

Description

The OV is a fully autonomous three-ton capsuled spacecraft designed to carry a 3-member crew to orbit and safely return to the Earth after a mission duration of few orbits to two days.

The space capsule will have life control and environment control systems. It will be equipped with emergency mission abort and emergency escape that can be done at the first stage and second stage of the rocket. The illustration of the spacecraft showed a main engine and smaller orientation engines arranged in a light package around the base of the capsule, indicating an earth-orbit maneuvering capability was to be included. The nose of the original version of the OV was free for a docking mechanism, but primary entry was evidently through a side hatch secured by explosive bolts.

The Orbital Vehicle is slated to be launched on the GSLV Mk II launcher.

About 16 minutes after liftoff from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC), Sriharikota, the rocket will inject the OV into an orbit 300–400 km from the Earth. The capsule would return for a splashdown in the Bay of Bengal.

The Indian OV spacecraft will be significantly smaller than current Russian Soyuz, Chinese Shenzhou, planned US Orion or past Apollo spaceships but larger than the past US Gemini spacecraft.

While many technological elements to put together a manned flight are already available, ISRO would need to develop many new and novel technologies to ensure a foolproof life-support system, safety, reliability and an escape system for the crew. And in order to perfect the reentry techniques considered crucial for a manned flight, ISRO is planning to carry out three more flights of Space Recovery Capsules (SRE) and few unmanned flights of the OV spaceship.

Funding and Infrastructure

Development of a fully autonomous orbital vehicle to carry a two-member crew into a low Earth orbit has begun. ISRO sources said the flight is likely to be in 2016. The government has allocated ₹ 500 million (US$10 million) for pre-project initiatives for 2007 through 2008. A manned mission into space would require about ₹ 124 billion (US$3 billion) and a period of seven years. The Planning Commission estimates that a budget of ₹ 50 billion (US$1 billion) is required for initial work of the manned mission during the Eleventh Five-Year Plan (2007–12). The project report prepared by ISRO has been cleared by the space commission. In February, 2009 the Government of India has given the green signal for the Manned Space flight Program due to launch in 2016.

M.C.Dathan, director of Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC), stated that ISRO will set up a full-fledged training facility in Bangalore for training astronauts. ISRO is also planning to build a third launch pad at Sriharkota for manned missions with extra facilities like entry into the crew capsule and an escape chute.

In spring 2009 the full-scale mock-up of crew capsule of OV was built and delivered to Satish Dhawan Space Centre for training of astronauts.

Schedule

In January 2010, it was announced that the ISRO OV would be launched with astronauts into space around 2016. However, in April 2012 it was reported that funding problems placed the future of the project in serious doubt; and in August 2013, it was announced that all manned spaceflight efforts by India had been designated as being 'off ISRO's priority list'.

However, by early 2014 the project had been reconsidered, and was one of the main beneficiaries of a substantial budget increase announced in February. Just prior to this, in January 2014, the ISRO Chairman revealed that the OV would be tested in flight in 2014. Like the SRE-1 mission, the vehicle would also splash down in the Bay of Bengal.

Crew Module Re-entry Experiment

On 13 February 2014, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited handed over the first Crew Module structural assembly to ISRO. ISRO's VSSC would equip the Crew Module with systems necessary for crew support, navigation, guidance and control systems. ISRO undertook an unmanned test launch of the vehicle aboard the GSLV Mk3 X1 experimental sub-orbital flight on 18 December 2014. The GSLV Mk3 launcher with a dummy upper cryogenic stage (filled with liquid nitrogen to simulate weight of fuel) was launched at 9:30am from the second launch pad at Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota. The crew module separated from the rocket at an altitude of 126 km. On board motors controlled and reduced the speed of the module until an altitude of 80 km. Thrusters were shutoff at 80 km and atmospheric drag further reduced speed of the capsule. The module heat shield was expected to experience temperature in excess of 1600 °C. Parachutes were deployed at an altitude of 15 km to slow down the module which performed a soft landing in the Bay of Bengal near Andaman and Nicobar islands.

This flight was used to test orbital injection, separation and re-entry procedures and systems of the Crew Capsule. Also tested were the capsule separation, heat shields and aerobraking systems, deployment of parachute, retro-firing, splashdown, flotation systems and procedures to recover the Crew Capsule from the Bay of Bengal.

Pad Abort Test

The Indian Space Research Organisation's Pad Abort Test is due for the March of 2017.