President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have congratulated Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for successfully conducting the first test flight of the Scramjet engine technology demonstrator yesterday. It will also help in bring down launch costs substantially.
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Usually rocket engines carry both fuel and an oxidiser tank on board for combustion, scramjets use oxygen from the atmosphere The newly developed engines make the spacecraft’s weight ligher, smaller and faster – thereby reducing launch costs. Isro scientists said that the scramjet engine would be tested about 55 seconds after take-off from the launchpad at SDSC.
On Sunday morning, the ISRO test-fired its scramjet engine fixed atop its high-powered sounding rocket RH-560. Such engines may help reducing the weight of the rockets by half, enhancing its efficiency, while cutting down the exorbitant cost that is now incurred and enable carrying heavier payload.
The official was quoted as saying, “The mission was successful”. When the second stage, to which two scramjet engines were fixed, auto-ignited, the rocket had reached 20km altitude at Mach 6 (7408.8kmph) and the flame sustained for five seconds, burning the fuel.
The Advanced Technology Vehicle (ATV), a sounding rocket (research rocket) with a solid booster carrying advanced scramjet engines, was successfully flight-tested from the launch pad of the Sathish Dhawan Space Centre, also known as Sriharikota Range (SHAR), at Sriharikota on Sunday at 6 a.m. ISRO first achieved the technological breakthrough in the design, development, characterisation and realisation of the Supersonic Combustion Ramjet, or Scramjet, in 2006.
Scramjet engines had auto-ignition capability, he said, adding ignition happens when hot air gets into contact with hydrogen.
As the commencement of the new scramjet testing will begin this evening, Chief Scientists of ISRO alongside the specialists of Vikram Sarabhai Space Center (VSSC) and Liquid Propulsion Systems Center (LPSC) have gone to Sriharikota for accomplishing the test on Sunday.
“It is similar to lighting a match during a cyclone”, he said.
ISRO’s is to place this new rocket alongside the Re-usable Launch Vehicle (RLV) which India successfully tested a few months ago.
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“Now using this technology, we need to design the actual vehicle”. It is only a baby step, but an important step, towards developing the fullfledged technology. So far only the US, Russia and the European Space Agency have demonstrated the advanced air breathing technology.
