ISRO conducted recovery trial of Gaganyaan's 'well deck', know the plan for landing of astronauts

On Tuesday, ISRO said that it conducted a 'well deck' recovery trial of Gaganyaan with the Indian Navy on December 6. ISRO said in a statement that the tests were conducted at the Eastern Naval Command using a well deck ship off the coast of Visakhapatnam. During this, the well deck in the ship can be filled with water, as the space agency of India has been saying, so that the boats, landing craft, and recovered spacecraft can go inside the ship.

The space agency is aiming to send astronauts up to 400 km by 2025. A first batch of ISRO's 'Mission Gaganyaan' crew recovery team has been trained in various marine conditions by a team of naval divers and marine commandos at the Naval Water Survival Training Facility (WSTF) in Kochi. According to ISRO, the Gaganyaan project envisages a three-member crew for a three-day mission by launching them into an orbit of 400 km and landing in Indian sea waters. After this, they are envisaged to demonstrate human space flight capability by returning them safely to Earth.

ISRO said that the primary objective of this trial is to reduce the recovery time and to ensure minimum discomfort for the crew after the crew module lands in the sea. ISRO said that recovery trials will continue as part of the ongoing preparations for Gaganyaan.

The operation included perfecting the recovery procedures of the crew module using the well-deck ship, an integral constituent of the mission's safety protocol. This is an important technique in the Gaganyaan mission for quickly and comfortably recovering the astronauts immediately after their space mission. During these trials, the sequence of operations for well deck recovery of the crew module was carried out by the Indian Navy and ISRO. This sequence includes attaching the recovery buoy, towing, entering the well deck ship, positioning the CM on the fixture, and draining the water from the well deck.

Recovery of the crew has to be done effortlessly in the shortest time during the end of any space mission when the crew module lands in the sea. One of the preferred options is taking the crew module along with the crew inside the well deck of the ship, from where the crew can comfortably come out of the crew module. During this time, the well deck of the ship can be filled with water, so that boats, landing craft, and recovered spacecraft can be taken inside to dock inside the ship. Hence, these trials have been carried out using simulated crew module mock-ups to perform well deck recovery.