The ambitious space mission aims to demonstrate human spaceflight capability. It will involve launching a crew of three members to an orbit of 400 km for a three-day mission and bring them back safely to earth, the ISRO's website says. Upon their return, the crew will land on Indian sea waters. The mission includes developing many critical technologies including human rated launch vehicles for carrying crew safely to space, a system that mimics life support systems of the Earth's environment, emergency escape provision among others. 

Vyommitra (from Sanskrit: vyoma, "space" and mitra, "friend") is a female-looking spacefaring humanoid robot being developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation to function on-board the Gaganyaan, a crewed orbital spacecraft. Vyommitra was first unveiled on 22 January 2020 at the Human Spaceflight and Exploration symposium in Bengaluru. It will accompany Indian astronauts in space missions and will also be a part of uncrewed experimental Gaganyaan missions prior to the crewed spaceflight missions. During the mission, Vyommitra will monitor through module parameters, alert and perform life support operations, perform activities like switch panel operations, and simulate other human functions in space.

Crew Module (CM) is identified as the payload in GSLV MK-III-X/CARE Mission. CARE is the acronym for Crew module Atmospheric Re-entry Experiment. The mission would be used as a platform for testing the re-entry technologies envisaged for Crew Module including validating the performance of parachute based deceleration system. CARE is expected to enhance the understanding of blunt body re-entry aerothermodynamics and parachute deployment in cluster configuration.

The Crew Module (CM) is separated from the Launch Vehicle at an altitude of 126 km, re-enters Earth’s atmosphere at about 80 km and descends further in ballistic mode. Beyond 80 km, CM follows an uncontrolled re-entry trajectory and impacts at sea about 180 km from Andaman and Nicobar Island from where it will be recovered by Indian Coast guard.

Space Capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE – 1) is a 550 kg capsule intended to demonstrate the technology of an orbiting platform for performing experiments in micro gravity conditions. After completion of the experiments, the capsule was de-orbited and recovered. SRE – 1 mission provided a valuable experience in fields like navigation, guidance and control during the re-entry phase, hypersonic aero thermodynamic, development of reusable thermal protection system (TPS), recovery through deceleration and flotation, besides acquisition of basic technology for reusable launch vehicles.

SRE – 1 carries two experiments, an Isothermal Heating Furnace (IHF) and a Bio-mimetic experiment. SRE was launched into a 635 km polar SSO in January 2007 as a co-passenger with CARTOSAT -2 and stayed in orbit for 10 days during which its payloads performed the operations they are intended to. The SRE capsule was de-boosted and recovered successfully back on earth on 22nd January 2007.