BANGALORE, India In a two-in-one mission, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully conducted the first experimental flight of itsnext-generation launch vehicle and demonstrated the re-entry and recovery of a prototype crew capsule.

The Dec. 18 maiden flight of theGeosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mark 3(GSLV-3) began with a liftoff at 9:30 a.mlocal time from the Satish Dhawan Space Centeron the southeastern coast of India and was over in 20 minutes.

ISRO said in a statement that this "suborbital" experimental mission was intended to test the vehicle performance during the critical atmospheric phase of its flight. The vehicle carried a passive, or nonfunctional, cryogenic upper stage. [See photos from India's space capsule test flight]

The rocket carried a 3,775-kilogram unmanned crew module built by Indian industry. The module, designed to accommodatethree astronauts, separated from the rocket at an altitude of 127 kilometers and, after being slowed by parachutes, splashed down in the Bay of Bengal.

The 42.4-meter tall GSLV-3 is a three-stage vehiclewitha liftoff weight of 630 metric tons. The first stage consists oftwo solid-rocket motors, each with 200 tons of propellant. Its second stage uses two restartable engines, with 110 tons of liquid propellant.

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. Themissionobjective was to test the first two stages they had never flown before and validate the rockets aerodynamic stability during the ascent phase through the atmosphere.

ISRO 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." Withthe success the rocket "has moved a step closer to its first developmental flight with the functional cryogenic upper stage."

"It has been a significant day for ISRO," the agency's chairman, Koppilli Radhakrishnan, said in a post-launch speech. "The performance of solid and liquid stage motors and the unmanned crew module was as expected."

Radhakrishnan said the rocket's cryogenic upper stageis still in development and that he is confident the first full-fledged flight will take place in two years. Once ready, he said, the GSLV-3will be able to launch satellites weighing 4 tons and could be used for the Indian manned spaceflight program.

The GSLV-3, indevelopment since 2002, was initially expected to become operational by 2010 or 2011, with its first flight in 2009 or 2010. The demonstrationflight was pushed back several times, one reason being the failure of the home-made cryogenic upper stage during a2010 flight of the current-generation GSLV.

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India's Prototype Space Capsule Passes Big Test