Elon Musk tweets congratulations on ISRO’s Gaganyaan engine test success

Team Udayavani, Jul 15, 2021, 5:03 PM IST

New Delhi: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk congratulated Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully conducted the third long-duration hot test of the liquid propellant Vikas engine for the Gaganyaan programme.

The Gaganyaan programme is the country’s first manned mission to space.

The Tesla CEO posted a one word tweet — “Congratulations!” alongside India’s flag emoticon.

Congratulations! ??

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 14, 2021

The test was done for the core L110 liquid stage of the human rated GSLV MkIII vehicle, as part of the engine qualification requirements for the Gaganyaan programme, the space agency said in a statement.

The engine was fired for 240 seconds at the test facility of ISRO Propulsion Complex (IPRC), Mahendragiri, Tamil Nadu, said the statement.

The performance of the engine met the test objectives and the engine parameters were closely matching with the predictions during the entire duration of the test, it said.

The objective of the Gaganyaan programme is to demonstrate the capability to send humans to low earth orbit onboard an Indian launch vehicle and bring them back to earth.