Reason: The engines and sounding rocket were their babies. “Now no other country flies its rocket powered by a scramjet engine”, K.Sivan, Director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) told reporters here on Sunday.
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With this success, India joined the select league of four space faring nations that have demonstrated flight testing of Scramjet engines. Those were attached to ISRO’s Rohini RH-560 rocket. Mr Sivan added: “We have tested it at Mach 6 speed”.
Sivan said that the entire mission lasted just 300 seconds. “Two scramjet engines were tested during the flight”, the official told IANS. The new engines ran for a total duration of six seconds. The speed at which it has to burn would also vary.
The twin scramjet engines were mounted on the back of the second stage. In his message to Chairman of ISRO A.S. Kiran Kumar, President Pranab Mukherjee said that the launch marks an important landmark in country space programme and demonstrates, India’s capabilities in space launch technology, yet again. The total cost of the making the innovative engine was around Rs.35 crores. There is a plan to design and develop a new vehicle that may look like a plane for the engine as it can not be used in existing launch vehicles. ISRO had earlier tested such an engine in 2006.
ISRO on Sunday morning test launched a scramjet engine, which is also known as supersonic combusting ramjet. While conventional rocket engines need to carry both fuel and oxidiser on board for combustion to produce thrust, air-breathing rocket systems on the other hand uses the atmospheric oxygen from their surroundings and burn it with the stored on- board fuel. The scramjet engine will reduce the cost, and weight, of the INSAT-3DR that is expected to be launched some time in September. The ATV with the scramjet engines weighed 3,277 kg at lift-off.
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The hypersonic engine, with its air breathing propulsion system, would carry only liquid hydrogen as fuel and takes oxygen from the atmosphere which it touches supersonic speed to burn the fuel for propulsion. Following the test on Sunday, the scramjet engine will be tested on a full-scale RLV, while the vehicle will be tested for its ability to land on a runway.
