First trial flight of Gaganyaan could take place in October: Minister Jitendra Singh

Union Minister of State for Science and Technology Jitendra Singh on Saturday lauded the successful launch of Aditya-L1 and said that next will be the first trial for Gaganyaan which might happen in October.

Calling the launch of Aditya L1 as a sunshine moment for India, Singh said that this has been possible because Prime Minister Narendra Modi has thrown open the gates of Sriharikota.

“It’s a sunshine moment for India. And secondly, like Chandrayaan, here also the whole of the nation was involved. And that’s been possible because Prime Minister Modi has thrown open the gates of Sriharikota. He’s brought all these stakeholders together, made them realize that this mission belongs to the whole of India,” the Union Minister told ANI.

“Next, I think, will be the first trial flight of Gaganyaan, which might happen in the month of October. That is, next month itself,” he added.

Aditya-L1 is a satellite dedicated to the comprehensive study of the sun, which will find out the unknown facts about the sun. The satellite will travel on Earth-bound orbits for 16 days, during which it will undergo five manoeuvres to gain the required speed to reach its destination.

Subsequently, Adiya-L1 will undergo a trans-Lagrangian1 insertion manoeuvre that will take 110 days. The satellite will travel approximately 15 million kilometres to reach the L1 point.

“Upon arrival at the L1 point, another manoeuvre binds Aditya-L1 to an orbit around L1, a balanced gravitational location between the Earth and the Sun. The satellite spends its whole mission life orbiting around L1 in an irregularly shaped orbit in a plane roughly perpendicular to the line joining the Earth and the Sun,” read the information shared on ISRO’s official website.

Despite being several hundred kilometres away from the sun, ‘Aditya L1’ will continuously observe it. Efforts will be made to gather as much information as possible about the sun. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) hopes that, similar to Chandrayaan-3, the Aditya-L1 mission will also be successful in achieving its objectives.

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, and Congress President Malikarjun Kharge, among other leaders, congratulated the ISRO scientists for the successful launch of Adita-L1. 

(This news report is published from a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has not been written or edited by OpIndia staff)