ISRO successfully launched India's first technology demonstrator of the indigenously made reusable launch vehicle(RLV) on Monday morning from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. This Swadeshi space shuttle is capable of launching satellites into orbit around earth and then re-enter the atmosphere.
Known as hypersonic flight experiment, it was a 10-minute mission from lift-off to splashdown, wherein a booster rocket along with RLV-TD was lifted up from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre and separated from the shuttle at an altitude of 50 km. Following separation, the RLV-TD climbed up for another 20km and then started descending to re-enter the earth's atmosphere. At a hypersonic speed of more than 5 Mach(five times the velocity of sound), it gilded back to a virtual runway on Bay of Bengal between Chennai and the Andaman archipelago.
-The 6.5 metre scale model is at least six times smaller than the final version and weighs about 1.5 tonnes.
Described as?a very preliminary step? in the development of a reusable rocket, RLV-TD is the unanimous solution to achieve low cost, reliable and on-demand space access, according to ISRO scientists.
It costs about$ 20,000 to send a kilogram in space currently. The objective of re-usable technology is to help reduce the cost of launching objects into space by 10 times.
RLV-TD is a series of technology demonstration missions that have been considered as a first step towards realising a Two Stage To Orbit(TSTO) fully re-usable vehicle, ISRO said.
A scaled-down model, the final RLV will be 40 metres in length, able to carry astronauts and will take 10 to 15 years to build, as per ISRO scientists.
According to ISRO, the shuttle will be used to test various technologies, including hypersonic flight, autonomous landing, powered cruise flight and hypersonic flight using air-breathing propulsion.
SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Blue Origin's New Shephard rocket have already partially tested reusable space shuttles. ISRO's RLV will join the likes of these companies.
