ISRO embarks on mission to launch space shuttle

Thiruvananthapuram, May 15

The Indian Space Research Organisation embarks this month on a space flight that would make history. The space agency is all set to undertake the launch of its indigenous version of a “space shuttle’, a fully made-in-India effort.

Today, a sleek-winged body almost the weight and size of a sports utility vehicle is being given final touches at Sriharikota, awaiting the final countdown.

Yes, the big powers abandoned the idea of a winged reusable launch vehicle but India’s frugal engineers believe the solution to reducing the cost of launching satellites into orbit is to recycle the rocket or make it reusable. 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.

Very soon, and if all goes well, possibly before the monsoon sets in, India’s space port at Sriharikota on the coast of the Bay of Bengal in Andhra Pradesh will witness the launch of the indigenously made Reusable Launch Vehicle - Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD).

This will be the first time ISRO will launch a spacecraft which actually has delta wings and after the launch, it will be glided back onto a virtual runway in the Bay of Bengal.

The RLV-TD 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. 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.

Very similar in its looks to the American space shuttle, the RLV-TD being experimented is a scale model which is almost six times smaller than the final version.

The final version will take at least 10-15 years to get ready since designing a human rated reusable rocket is no kid stuff.

One key technology the scientists had to develop was to make materials that can withstand the very high temperatures that the exterior of the vehicle is faced with as it comes back into the dense atmosphere after its journey through near vacuum in space.

To be able to withstand 5000-7000 degrees Celsius temperature, the scientists have developed very lightweight heat resistant silica tiles that are plastered on the underbelly of the so-called Indian space plane.

In fact, it is these heat resistant tiles and thermal coating that failed on Space Shuttle Columbia, that resulted in the death of Indian-American astronaut Kalpana Chawla in 2003.

After the successful deployment of the swadeshi Global Positioning System through NAVIC or Navigation with Indian Constellation, ISRO is again reaching for the stars. — PTI