The Crew Module Atmospheric Re-entry Experiment (CARE) is an experimental test vehicle for the

Indian Space Research Organisation The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO; ) is the national space agency of India, headquartered in Bengaluru. It operates under the Department of Space (DOS) which is directly overseen by the Prime Minister of India, while the Chairman o ...

's future ISRO orbital vehicle called ''

Gaganyaan Gaganyaan (Sanskrit IAST: ''gagan-yāna'', ) is an Indian crewed orbital spacecraft intended to be the formative spacecraft of the Indian Human Spaceflight Programme. The spacecraft is being designed to carry three people, and a planned upgrad ...

''. It was launched successfully on 18 December 2014 from the Second Launch Pad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, by a

GSLV Mk III The Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (LVM 3), previously referred to as the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III (GSLV Mk3), is a three-stage medium-lift launch vehicle developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Primarily desi ...

designated by ISRO as the LVM 3X CARE mission. Total cost of mission was . Cost of launch vehicle and CARE module was 140 crore and 15 crore.

Characteristics of the vehicle

The crew module was mounted upside-down inside the payload fairing of the GSLV Mk III. CARE was made of

aluminium Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It ha ...

alloy and had a lift-off mass of 3,735 kg. Its diameter was 3100 mm and its height was 2698 mm. The module had an ablative thermal protection. The side panels were covered with Medium Density Ablative (MDA) tiles and the forward heat shield was made of carbon phenolic tiles. It was powered by batteries and was equipped with six liquid-propellant (MMH/MON3) 100 N thrusters.

Preliminary tests

A practice run of the recovery of crew module was done on 31 October 2014 with

Indian Coast Guard The Indian Coast Guard (ICG) is a maritime law enforcement and search and rescue agency of India with jurisdiction over its territorial waters including its contiguous zone and exclusive economic zone. The Indian Coast Guard was formally es ...

ship ICGS ''Samudra Pahredar''.

Mission description

CARE was launched on 18 December 2014 at 04:00 UTC. The crew module was separated at the intended height of 126 km and a speed of 5300 m/s. It entered a coast phase during which it performed three axis control manoeuvres in order to ensure zero degree

angle of attack In fluid dynamics, angle of attack (AOA, α, or \alpha) is the angle between a reference line on a body (often the chord line of an airfoil) and the vector representing the relative motion between the body and the fluid through which it is m ...

at reentry. The ballistic reentry started from an altitude of about 80 km. At this altitude, the propulsion was shut down. The heat shield experienced temperatures around 1,000 degrees C and the capsule experienced deceleration of up to 13 g. After the re-entry the vehicle performed a descent and splashdown during which an end-to-end validation of the parachute system was performed, including the demonstration of the apex cover separation and the parachute deployment in cluster configuration. The deployment sequence started when CARE had slowed to a speed of 233 m/s. The crew module carried three stages of parachutes, all of which came in pairs. First, both 2.3-meter diameter pilot parachutes came out, followed by the 6.2-meter drogue parachutes, which cut the capsule's velocity down to 50 m/s. Then both main parachutes were deployed at a height of about 5 km. These parachutes, each 31 meters in diameter, were the largest ever made in India. CARE splashed down into the

Bay of Bengal The Bay of Bengal is the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean, bounded on the west and northwest by India, on the north by Bangladesh, and on the east by Myanmar and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India. Its southern limit is a line bet ...

about 600 km from Port Blair in the

Andaman Islands The Andaman Islands () are an archipelago in the northeastern Indian Ocean about southwest off the coasts of Myanmar's Ayeyarwady Region. Together with the Nicobar Islands to their south, the Andamans serve as a maritime boundary between t ...

and about 1600 km from the

Sriharikota Sriharikota is a Barrier island off the Bay of Bengal coast located in the Shar Project settlement of Tirupati district in Andhra Pradesh, India. It houses the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, one of the two satellite launch centres in India (the ...

launch site. Immediately afterwards the main parachutes were detached. CARE was recovered by the

after tracking its signal beacon. The entire duration of the experiment from launch to splashdown was 20 minutes 43 seconds. After recovery the module was brought to Chennai on 22 December 2014, from where it will be sent to the Satish Dhawan Space Centre for preliminary processing.ISRO Module Heads Home After Sojourn
The New Indian Express 22 December 2014 The module will then be sent to Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre for further study and analysis.

Telemetry from ISRO

Doordarshan Doordarshan (abbreviated as DD; Hindi: , ) is an Indian public service broadcaster founded by the Government of India, owned by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and one of Prasar Bharati's two divisions. One of India's largest b ...

's telecast of the GSLV Mk.III LVM3-X ascent and CARE module's ballistic descent showed screen displays of the following telemetry:

Industrial organisation

* Hindustan Aeronautics Limited * Aerial Delivery Research and Development Establishment,

Agra Agra (, ) is a city on the banks of the Yamuna river in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, about south-east of the national capital New Delhi and 330 km west of the state capital Lucknow. With a population of roughly 1.6 million, Agra ...

- parachute *Valeth Hightech Composites

References