ISRO developing reusable launch vehicle

A model of Re entry launch vehicle (RLV)

ISRO‘s design of the Reusable Launch Vehicle-Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD) has been approved by the National Review Committee. An ISRO official said design-related issues have been addressed and presented to the National Review Committee and clearance obtained to go ahead to build the RLV-TD.

The space agency, as a first step towards realizing a Two-Stage To Orbit (TSTO) re-usable launch vehicle, has developed a winged RLV-TD. ISRO, in its recently released annual report, stated that design options have been finalized. Besides, the mission design has been completed with a revised vehicle mass. The RLV-TD will act as a flying test-bed to evaluate various technologies — hypersonic flight, autonomous landing, powered cruise flight and hypersonic flight using air breathing propulsion.

The first in the series of trials is the Hypersonic Flight Experiment (HEX) followed by the landing experiment (LEX), Return Flight Experiment (REX) and Scramjet Propulsion Experiment (SPEX).

During HEX, the vehicle will take lift off in the form of a rocket with a booster. Later, it can be recovered from sea. Though the trials for the first experiment are slated to take place this year, an Isro official said the launch date for carrying out HEX from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota has not been fixed. The development and flight testing of the Reusable Launch Vehicles-Technology demonstrator missions leading to Two-Stage To Orbit (TSTO) is part of India’s Space Vision 2025 and is expected to bring down cost significantly.

ISRO, in January 2007, conducted the Space capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE-1). Launched by the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C7) from Satish Dhawan Space Centre on January 10, 2007, the capsule was successfully recovered on January 22, 2007, from the Bay of Bengal.

PSLV-C18 Successfully Launches Megha-Tropiques

ISRO’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C18) proved its mettle once again. PSLV-C18 has put four satellites successfully into the orbit:

The 4 satellites were:

Indo-French satellite Megha-Tropiques for studying the water cycle and energy exchanges in the tropics.

SRMSat, a nanosatellite built by students of SRM University.

VesselSat-1, a microsatellite from Luxembourg.

Jugnu, a nanosatellite integrated by students of IIT-Kanpur.

The satellites used for: 

Megha-Tropiques, with four scientific instruments, will help in predicting the Indian monsoons, floods, cyclones and droughts, besides estimating the weather in the short-term and climate in the long-term in the tropical countries of the world. 

The 11-kg SRMSat will address the problem of global-warming and the pollution levels in the atmosphere by monitoring the carbon-dioxide present there. 

The 3-kg Jugnu is a remote-sensing satellite that will minor vegetation and water-bodies. 

VesselSat will help in locating ships cruising in the sea-lanes of the world.

NASA satellite is falling down

A 5.4-tonne dead satellite of NASA will soon fall to Earth but NASA saying there is very little chance that it will hit anyone.

The space agency does not know when or where its 20-year-old satellite will drop. It will probably hit the earth in late September but could fall in October. And it could land anywhere south of Juneau, Alaska, and north of the tip of South America. Nasa says there is only a one in 3,200 chance of satellite parts hitting someone.

Experts say not to worry. In the more than 50 years of the space age, no one has ever been hurt by falling space debris. The 5.4-tonne satellite was used to monitor the atmosphere. Most of it will burn up during re-entry. Only about 550kg of metal should survive.

Indian Space Shuttle

Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is going to launch its own reusable space shuttle very soon. 

Apparently, the shuttlecraft is currently being held in a secret location in Kerala.  An Indian version of the space shuttle will be test-flown from the spaceport at Sriharikota in a year’s time. The Reusable Launch Vehicle-Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD), as it is called, will be a combination rocket-aircraft: the aircraft with a winged body, which is the RLV, will sit vertically on the rocket.

Three women to supervise GSAT-12

Three ISRO women are diligently helping their 'baby' take its first steps in a sprawling antenna 'farm' amid village fields 200 km west of Bangalore, At its Master Control Facility (MCF) here, blinking screens show the status of GSAT-12, the latest communication satellite of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). Supervising each move are three women, products of home campus, trained by Isro.

Project director T. K. Anuradha, mission director Pramodha Hegde and operations director Anuradha Prakasham, are the three women at the helm of affairs. After weeks of tests, the deployed antenna will link remote villages and hamlets to their resource centers, tele-medicine outlets and students who take lessons from far-away city campuses.

"The feeling is like delivering a baby," a beaming T. K. Anuradha, an electronics engineer from University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering, Bangalore, said. Last Friday from Sriharikota the PSLV-C17 launched the satellite onto a highly elliptical orbit stretching 284 km to 21,000 km from the earth.

The job of taking it to the intended orbit is supervised by Pramodha Hegde, an electronics engineer who studied at B. V. Bhoomaraddi College of Engineering and Technology in Hubli, Karnataka. "The toughest of the five orbit raising manoeuvres was the first. At the nearest point to earth, the satellite moves the fastest as per Kepler's Law, leaving a narrow window of time to fire the motors, optimising fuel use," she said.

Anuradha Prakasham ensures that the trio plays in tune keeping to the beat. "Different injection operations went precisely as planned," said Prakasha, a postgraduate in physics from Cochin University of Science and Technology.