ISRO on April 2, 2023 successfully demonstrated the landing experiment of the Reusable Launch Vehicle-Technology Demonstration (RLV-TD) programme. The test was carried out at the Aeronautical Test Range in Challakere, Chitradurga.
Points To Remember
- To conduct the demonstration, ISRO used Indian Air Forces (IAF) Chinook helicopter.
- Chinook dropped the RLV-TD from a 4.5 km altitude.
- The Reusable Launch Vehicle Autonomous Landing Mission (RLV LEX) test was the second of five tests that are a part of ISRO’s efforts to develop RLVs.
- The latest development came six years after ISRO’s previous test in 2006 when its RLV HEX (Hypersonic Flight Experiment) space plane landed at a precise location calibrated over the waters of the Bay of Bengal.
- RLVs, also known as space planes/shuttles, will be capable of travelling to low earth orbits.
- RLVs can deliver payloads in the low orbits and return to earth so that they can be used again for the similar task.
- The mission designated as a Landing Experiment (LEX) proved some critical parameters for mastering the technology required for a full-fledged space plane in the future.
- The National Review Committee gave its go ahead signal to the ISRO’s proposal to build RLV spacecraft.
- Following the approval, ISRO built the first design and named it as RLV-TD (Technology Demonstrator).
ISRO aims to lower te cost of RLV by around 80 per cent. - ISRO used many made-in-India advanced technologies to conduct the test, these include landing gear, aerofoilhoneycomb fins, atellite navigation system etc.
- In coing years, ISRO will conduct demonstration for an orbital re-entry experiment (OREX) and a Scramjet Propulsion Experiment (SPEX) of the space plane.
- For OREX mission, vehicle will be mounted atop the powered cryogenic upper-stage engine of a GSLV Mark-II rocket.
- The SPEX mission will prove the scramjet-powered flight of the vehicle in the atmospheric regions.
Operational Reusable Rockets
- So far, there have only been 7 operational reusable rockets, of which 2 — USSR’s Buran and NASA’s Space Shuttle — were retired for safety.
- The 5 operational ones today are all private vehicles — Space X’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, Rocket Lab’s Electron, and the 2 suborbital vehicles, Blue Origin’s New Shepard and Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo.
- Both USSR’s Buran and NASA’s Space Shuttle were space planes.
- The use case for reusable space launch vehicles has revived with the private space launch services provider Space X.
- Since 2017, Space X has been partially using RLVs for its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets .
- SpaceX is also planning to launch Startship which will be a fully functional reusable launch vehicle system.