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The Crew Module Atmospheric Re-entry Experiment is an experimental test vehicle for the Indian Space Research Organisation’s future ISRO orbital vehicle called Gaganyaan.
Gaganyaan is the human space flight programme under which Indian astronauts will go into space by 2022.This will be done by using its own capabilities.
Crew Module Atmospheric Re-entry Experiment (CARE)
- It was launched successfully on 18 December 2014 from the Second Launch Pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre by a GSLV Mk III designated by ISRO as the LVM 3X CARE mission.
- A GSLV-Mk III launch vehicle will lift them to their orbit, which has the necessary payload capability to launch a three-member crew module in low earth orbit.
- If successful, India would become the fourth nation to conduct a human space flight programme after USSR/Russia, USA and China.
- It is an Rs.10,000-crore Indian human space flight scheduled for 2022.
- India has signed agreements with Russia and France for cooperation on the Gaganyaan mission.
- DRDO signed MoUs with ISRO to offer technologies for the mission, including space food, survival kits for crew, radiation protection equipment and parachutes.
The rocket: GSLV Mk-III
- The spacecraft carrying human beings, called crew module, is likely to weigh in excess of 5 to 6 tonnes.
- ISRO’s main launch vehicle, the PSLV (Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle), which carried the Chandrayaan and Mangalyaan missions too, can carry payloads that are barely up to 2 tonnes, and that too only to orbits at about 600 km altitude from the Earth’s surface.
- That is why the development of GSLV Mk-III, a launch vehicle with capabilities to deliver much heavier payloads much deeper into space, was necessary.
