Successful launch of RLV by ISRO
Posted on: 23/May/2016 4:47:41 PM
The very first technology demonstrator of Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) is successfully launched in India today. With this, satellites can be launched around the earth and reenter atmosphere from Sriiharikota in Andhra Pradesh.
At 7 am today, at Satish Dhawan Space Centre, a booster rocket with RLV-TD got lifted up. This got separated at 50 km altitude. It then got climbed to yet another 20 km and started with its descent. It then got back to the earth’s atmosphere with hypersonic speed of over 5 Mach and got on Bay of Bengal at a place somewhere between Andaman archipelago and Chennai. This was a hypersonic fight experiment that lasted for 10 minutes right from the time it got lit off until it got splashed down.
One of the ISRO spokesmen said the mission was very successful. Things went on as per schedule. He also added that the winged space plane cannot be recovered. This experiment is a very preliminary move for beginning to use reusable launch vehicles. There are a number of such flights of RLV-TD to be launched before it turns into a reusable launch system that aids in putting satellites in orbit.
A former director of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram, M.C. Dathan said this mission was accomplished successfully and that the RLV-TD is doing super good, floating on sea. This RLV will be a complete solution for cost, reliable and on-demand space access, say scientists from ISRO.
RLV is one of the array of steps for technology demonstration mission towards realizing TSTO (Two Stage To Orbit) fully re-usable vehicle, said ISRO.
This is made in such a way that it acts as testbed for evaluating several technologies including that of hypersonic flights, power cruise flight, autonomous landing that uses air-breathing propulsion.
