India launched its maiden indigenous winged Reusable Launch Vehicle, RLV, from Sriharikota spaceport in 2016.
The RLV Technology Demonstration (RLV-TD), which is ultimately aimed at putting satellites into orbit around Earth and then re-entering the atmosphere, was carried up on a solid rocket motor. The nine-metre-long rocket weighs 11 tonnes. Very similar in its looks to the US space shuttle, the double delta-winged RLV-TD being experimented with is a scale model that is almost 6 times smaller than the final version.
Credits: Third Party Reference
The 6.5 m long aeroplane-like structure weighs 1.75 tonnes and was hoisted into the atmosphere on the special rocket booster. After launching from the Sriharikota spaceport, it would glide back onto a virtual runway in the Bay of Bengal.
The vehicle would re-enter the atmosphere after reaching a height of over 70 km. Reusable technology aims to help reduce the cost of launching objects into space by 10 times. It costs about $ 20,000 to send a kilogram in space currently.
Indian Space Research Organization or ISRO plans to test two more such prototypes before the final version, which will be about six times larger at around 40 metres and will take off around 2030.
After the test flight was declared successful, Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated scientists at ISRO and tweeted: “Launch of India’s first indigenous space shuttle RLV-TD is the result of the industrious efforts of our scientists. Congrats to them.”
Credits: Third Party Reference
No other country is currently operationally flying a winged spacecraft into space – the US retired its space shuttles in 2011, and the Russians flew theirs only once in 1989. The mission is known as the hypersonic flight experiment and is expected to last about 10 minutes.
In a race to master reusable technology for space shuttles, the RLV, the likes of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket, both companies have already partially tested reusable space shuttles. It is essentially an attempt by India to bring down the cost of making infrastructure in space.
