India is all set to take a giant leap in March as far as space research is concerned. The South Asian powerhouse is planning to test a Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) as a part of a technology demonstration project that will allow the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre of India to make a final decision on developing a full-fledged vehicle that can go to space, inject an orbiter and return to land in future. Illustration Deputy Director of the Space Centre S Somanath has explained that RLV is basically a winged vehicle that will take off like a rocket and glide back to the land just like a plane. It will touch Mach 5 (five times the speed of the sound), re-enter the atmosphere and land on water. According to him, they have also planned a developed version of the RLV that can be used for manned missions in the coming years. During the experiment, the RLV will land on water as India does not have a runway of the requisite length of 5km. The longest runway in the country is just 2km. Currently, it costs USD 5,000 to put 1kg of payload in the orbit by using a conventional rocket. However, a RLV can do the same for only USD 500 per kg of payload. As a result, the exclusive use of RLVs will bring down India’s annual spending for satellite launches 10 times from the current INR 3,000,000,000 or USD 47,487,139. Somanath also said that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) recently concluded ground tests on the vehicle and in the final phase of testing, it would conduct a hypersonic test flight and landing in water. “It will be a winged vehicle that will take off vertically like a rocket and glide back to land horizontally like a plane,” he stressed. According to Somnath (also the Project Director for ISRO’s biggest rocket GSLV MkIII), the RLV can easily reach an altitude of more than 100km within five minutes. The vehicle will glide a bit before starting its descent after activating its fin and wing controls, he told the press in the southern Indian city of Thiruvananthapuram a couple of days back. “In about 20 minutes after lift-off from Sriharikota, it would land in the Bay of Bengal, close to the shore. As the next step, we would try an air-breaking engine which is under development at ISRO,” he added. The US and Russia are also developing futuristic RLVs mainly for launching satellites.
Read More at inserbia.info/today/2015/01/india-plans-to-launch-rlv-in-march/?utm_content=bufferd9530&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
