India’s maiden manned space mission – Gaganyaan to conduct its first test flight in December this year

ISRO Chairman V. Narayanan has said that India’s maiden manned space mission – Gaganyaan will conduct its first test flight in December this year. Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, Mr Narayanan said that Gaganyaan is progressing well, as 80 per cent of tests, or around seven thousand 700 tests, have been conducted so far.
He added that the remaining two thousand 300 tests will be completed by March next year. Highlighting other achievements of ISRO, Mr Narayanan said that 196 accomplishments have been achieved so far this year, including GLEX-2025 and a high-thrust electric propulsion system. He noted that a 6 thousand 500 kilogram communication satellite of the USA will be launched from an Indian launchpad. He further highlighted that 13 terabits of data from Aditya L1 have been provided to the scientific community this year.
Talking about ISRO’s role in the Axiom-4 Mission, the ISRO chief mentioned that ISRO’s technical expertise played a crucial role in ensuring the safe launch of the mission. He noted that ISRO corrected the LOX leakage observed in the first stage of the Falcon-9 Rocket, avoiding catastrophic failure.