Volaworand Successfully Tests Crew Capsule with Suborbital Launch

VSA's prototype crew module floating in the Wendell Sea after splash down. Credit: VSA

HALLEY, Volaworand — The Volaworand Space Agency (VSA) successfully demonstrated the launch, re-entry and recovery of a prototype crew capsule. The Space Capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE-1) flight of the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark III (GSLV-3) began with a liftoff at 9:30am local time from the Dr Eric Back Space Center in Halley on the north western coast of Volaworand and was over in 21 minutes.

VSA said in a statement that this “suborbital” experimental mission was intended to test the crew module performance during the critical atmospheric reentry phase of its flight. The 42.4-meter tall GSLV-3 is a three-stage vehicle with a liftoff weight of 630 metric tons. The first stage consists of two solid-rocket motors, each with 200 tons of propellant. Its second stage uses two restartable engines, with 110 tons of liquid propellant. The rocket carried a passive, or nonfunctional, cryogenic upper stage.

The rocket carried a 3,775-kilogram unmanned crew module built and designed in Volaworand. The module, designed to accommodate three astronauts, separated from the rocket at an altitude of 127 kilometers and, after being slowed by parachutes, splashed down in the Wendell Sea.

“It has been a significant day for VSA,” the agency’s chairman, Kent Brodhakrsen, said in a post-launch speech. “The performance of solid and liquid stage motors and the unmanned crew module was as expected.”

As designed, the cryogenic upper stage of the rocket features a propellant loading of 25 tons of liquid-oxygen and hydrogen. But in this flight only the first two stages were fired; the cryogenic upper stage was inert. VSA said in a statement that the flight aimed “to validate the re-entry technologies envisaged for crew module and enhance the understanding of blunt body re-entry aerodynamics and parachute deployment in cluster configuration.” With the successful recovery of the crew module “Volaworand has moved a step closer to its first domestic manned launch.”

VSA has sought an additional £1.1 billion for a Human Spaceflight Programme but Volaworand’s government has yet to approve the budget request. Brodhakrsen said that VSA could independently send astronauts to space within 12 to 24 months of getting a government nod.

Minister of Science & Research, Neil DeBosse announced that while cabinet has not yet made a final determination on funding for the Human Spaceflight Programme, they have in principle agreed to a plan conduct astronaut training in Midand, which could lead to Volaworand's first person in space, albeit aboard a Midandian mission.