India is moving steadily toward sending its first astronauts to orbit on indigenous spacecraft, but it is taking a “stepwise” approach and has not yet committed funds to human missions, according to the new chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).
Instead, India’s human spaceflight program is funded for a four-year development and test effort that will build and fly an unmanned capsule to test its crew environmental control and life support system (Eclss) and launch-escape system, says K. Radhakrishnan, who became ISRO chairman Oct. 31, 2009.
Flying a two-person crew will also require development of a new cryogenic upper-stage engine for the upgraded Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV Mark III) now in development. ISRO is on the verge of becoming only the fourth space agency to develop and fly a cryogenic upper-stage engine (AW&ST March 29/April 5, p. 18). But the staged-combustion engine set to fly this month will be followed by a more powerful gas-generator cryogenic engine for human-rated flights.
If development work goes well, ISRO will seek funding for manned tests of the vehicle on the GSLV. Although the 2.5-meter-dia. (8.2-ft.) capsule is being designed for three crewmembers, initial flights will carry two astronauts.
“We will first make this unit with an Eclss system, and will have a few unmanned flights of this module before we actually put a human being inside, initially monitoring the conditions, et cetera,” Radhakrishnan told Aviation Week at ISRO headquarters in this city, formerly known as Bangalore.
The first unmanned flight will lift off on a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), followed by a test on the GSLV-D3 with India’s new indigenous cryogenic upper-stage engine.
“That is the one that is now getting funded,” the ISRO chairman says. “Then it will be followed by the others. . . . We are asking for them in phases.”
The initial four-year effort is funded at Rupees 12,400 crore ($2.8 billion), Radhakrishnan says.
The first GSLV-D3 is scheduled to launch the third week in April with the GSAT-4, a Ka-band testbed that will also carry an experimental GPS-augmentation payload. The human-rated vehicle will fly on the planned GSLV Mark III, which will use two new S200 solid-propellant strap-on boosters generating almost 500 metric tons of thrust each, and an upper stage with the planned gas-generator (GG) cryogenic engine.
No date set yet for the first Indian astronaut in orbit. I wonder if they will get their own name for astronaut or share the english one? Astronaut (english/american), cosmonaut (russian), taikonaut (not so official chinese), and...?
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Idrathernaut?
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