India continues to refine the hardware and recovery procedures for its Gaganyaan human spaceflight program.

The latest exercise, called the Integrated Air Drop Test (IADT-01), was carried out at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota on Aug. 24. A full-size mock-up of the Gaganyaan Crew Module — the capsule that will carry astronauts — was lifted by an Indian Air Force helicopter to a height of about 1.8 miles (3 kilometers) and then released, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said in a recent update.

"This test successfully demonstrated the objective of end-to-end performance validation of the critical parachute-based deceleration system of the Crew Module for Gaganyaan mission in one of the typical mission scenarios," the statement read.

During the test, the capsule

See Full Page