ISRO's Made In India Space Shuttle, RLV-TD Successfully Launched Today

The Indian space agency is all set to undertake the maiden launch of its very own indigenously version of a 'space shuttle', a fully made-in-India effort. This is India's first test flight for the indigenously made Reusable Launch Vehicle - Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD)., six years after Nasa grounded its reusbale launch shuttle in 2011.

ISRO

This will be the first time Isro will launch a spacecraft, which has delta wings and after launch it will be glided back onto a virtual runway in the Bay of Bengal. Scientists at ISRO believe that they could reduce the cost of launching stuff into space by as much as 10 times if reusable technology succeeds, bringing it down to $2,000 per kg.

Director of Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, K Sivan said it will take at least a decade to have a full-scale reusable launcher, which will land like an aircraft and can be recovered and reused.?It is cheered as a baby step towards the historic launch of the advanced RLV by 2020, ?VSSC director K Sivan said: "RLV-TD is a baby step towards the launch of the advanced RLV with air breathing propulsion system (ABPS) and reusable launch vehicle technology. The purpose of developing advanced RLV with ABPS is to reduce the cost of space launches, if engines and structures are recovered and re-used. Current RLV-TD has no recovery plans," he said.

The shuttle is unlikely to be recovered from sea during this experiment as it is expected that the vehicle will disintegrate on impact with water since it is not designed to float.

PTI

The purpose of the experiment is not to see it float but to glide and navigate from a velocity five times higher than the speed of sound onto a designated virtual runway in the Bay of Bengal some 500 km from the coast.

The RLV-TD being experimented is a scale model which is almost 6 times smaller than the intended final version, which will take at least 10-15 years to get ready.

ISRO

The only countries that have attempted operational flights of a space shuttle are America, which flew its space shuttle 135 times and then retired it in 2011. Since then it lost its capacity to send astronauts in space on American-made rockets.

The Russians made only a single space shuttle and called it Buran it flew into space just once in 1989. After that the French and Japanese have made some experimental flights.