Topic– Achievements of Indians in science & technology; indigenization of technology and developing new technology.
3) India’s human spaceflight programme (HSP), the Gaganyaan, is still a long way away, despite advancements in some critical technologies in the past decade. Analyze. (250 words)
Why this question
The PM of India recently announced India’s intentions to send a Human spaceflight by 2022. This would be a remarkable achievement for India given that only three other countries have successfully launched such a program. It is therefore essential to know the preparedness and challenges involved in the programme.
Directive word
Analyze- Analyze- Here we have to dig deep into the issue and identify and discuss about all the related and important aspects and correlate them to satisfy the key demand of the question.
Key demand of the question.
The question wants us to delve deep into India’s HSP and identify the critical technologies required for the mission and bring out the level of preparedness of launching a successful Gaganyaan Mission.
Structure of the answer
Introduction- Write a few lines about the spaceflight and its history. E.g Human spaceflight is a space travel with a crew or passengers aboard the spacecraft. Spacecraft carrying people may be operated directly, by human crew, or it may be either remotely operated from ground stations on Earth or be autonomous, able to carry out a specific mission with no human involvement. The first human spaceflight was launched by the Soviet Union on 12 April 1961. Mention India’s Gaganyaan Mission.
Body- Mention that the objective is to carry a crew of two to low Earth orbit (LEO) and return them safely for a water-landing at a predefined landing zone. The program is proposed to be implemented in defined phases. Currently, the activities are progressing with a focus on the development of critical technologies for subsystems
Discuss in points the critical technologies required for the mission and discuss their level of preparedness.
E.g Environment Control and Life Support Systems- meant to make the crew capsule liveable and the flight safe for the astronauts. in development phase and work is going on in case of space suits etc.
The Crew Escape System- It is an emergency escape measure designed to quickly pull the crew module along with the astronauts to a safe distance from the launch vehicle in the event of a launch abort. Mention experiment for emergency escape of astronauts called the Pad Abort Test which will be repeated at higher distances etc.
Crew Module- India has successfully launched a crew module with dummy payloads and brought it back to the Arabian sea etc.
A new dedicated control centre for HSP would be set up at ISTRAC etc.
Conclusion- Based on your discussion, form a fair and a balanced conclusion on the given issue.
