The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully launched a test flight (TV D1) for its Gaganyaan human spaceflight program, in southern India's Andhra Pradesh.

This launch took place from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on October 21.

Visuals showed the rocket jetting off into the sky. It left behind a trail of smoke as the test flight soared into the sky with announcements being made in the background. According to a report, this was a massive stride made by the ISRO in an attempt to exhibit India's capability of sending human beings to space. This was the first of a series of test flights that the ISRO would conduct in a bid to make India one of the few nations in the world to send an aircraft with crew into space.

As per a report, the scheduled lift-off of the test flight was at 8:00 am but it was delayed by 45 minutes owing to bad weather. The mission witnessed another setback when the launch was halted five seconds before the lift off due to an anomaly. The launch finally took place at 10:00 am.

This test was done to ascertain to check that in case of a malfunction in the rocket, the crew could escape or not. Should these test missions prove to be successful, India would be able to send a three-member crew to low-Earth orbit. This is most likely to happen in 2025.

S Somanath, the chief of the ISRO, lauded the efforts of all the scientists who were part of this mission and said, "I am very happy to announce the successful accomplishment of the TV-D1 mission. The purpose of this mission was to demonstrate the crew escape system for the Gaganyaan program through a test vehicle demonstration in which the vehicle went up to a Mach number, which is slightly above the speed of sound and initiated an abort condition for the crew escape system to function. The crew escape system took the crew module away from the vehicle and subsequent operations including the touch-down at the sea have been very well accomplished. and we have confirmation of the data for all of this."