ISRO to Test First Landing of a Relaunch Vehicle: Chairman
The Indian Space Research Organization seems set for the first test landing of the route (RLV-LEX) of the Reusable Launch Vehicle – Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD) from the flight test range in the Karnataka region, Chitradurga, its Chairman S Somanath indicating that the situation weather is monitored. . .
“We are looking at the weather. The weather is still not good. So, we are waiting for the wind and other systems to be healthy. We will do that,” said Somanath, who is the Secretary in the Ministry of Space, told PTI here.
According to ISRO officials, the RLV wing assembly will be carried by helicopter to an altitude of three to five kilometers and released at a distance of four to five kilometers ahead of the runway at horizontal speed. After release, the RLV will glide, move towards the runway and automatically land on the landing gear at the defense airstrip near Chitradurga.
National agency sources working here earlier said that new systems such as landing gear, parachute, hook beam integration, radar altimeter and pseudolite have been developed and are suitable.
ISRO carried out its first RLV-TD HEX-01 (Hypersonic Flight Experiment-01) mission on May 23, 2016 from SDSC SHAR and successfully demonstrated key technology for design and flight testing of re-entry vehicles. However, it was a suborbital plane and was designed to land on the ocean.
One of the key technologies that will be demonstrated in the RLV-LEX mission is the approach and automatic landing of the runway, according to ISRO.
To achieve the technical capability of end-to-end reusable launch vehicle (RLV), this milestone (RLV-LEX) should be achieved before the RLV ORE (Orbital Re-Entry Experiment) campaign, ISRO officials said.
In ORE, a winged body called Orbital Re-entry Vehicle (ORV) will be taken to orbit by an ascent vehicle taken from the existing GSLV and PSLV stages and remain in orbit for a fixed period, re-enter and land on the runway. independently of the landing gear.
