testcurrentaffairs:: All info about India's first reusable space shuttle, RLV-TD launched from Sriharikota

Who: India's first reusable space shuttle, RLV-TD

Where: From Sriharikota

What: Launched by ISRO

When: 23 May 2016

"This is the first time ISRO will be launching a winged flight vehicle. The RLV is a mechanism to bring down the cost of launch. India intends to go through a series of technology demonstration exercises, first one of it, what we call HEX-01, that is a hypersonic experiment. It is called a winged body."

Some information about facts, details and features of Reusable Launch Vehicle- RLV

1. A booster rocket with the RLV-TD lifted up at 7 a.m. from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre, and the launch vehicle separated from it at an altitude of 50 km.
2. Apart from the US (NASA) and Russia (Roscomos), Japan (JAXA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) have developed the RLV technology.
3. The 6.5 metre-long scale model of the re-usable launch vehicle weighs about 1.75 tonnes and was made at a cost of Rs. 95 crore. It was built at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram by a team of 600 scientists over five years.
4. Re-usable technology aims to help reduce the cost of launching objects into space by 10 times. Space agencies worldwide spend on average $20,000 to build and use medium-to-heavy weight rockets to launch satellites into the earth’s orbits.
5.  1.75-tonne winged shuttle has been built in an attempt to reduce the cost of manufacturing infrastructure in space by 10 times
6. RLV, being dubbed as India’s own space shuttle, is the unanimous solution to achieve low cost, reliable and on—demand space access, according to ISRO scientists.
7. 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.
8. The long-term objective of this mission is to reduce the launch cost by 80 percent of the present cost by using a reusable vehicle.

Regardless of recoverability, HEX carried five distinct mission objectives, including: validating the aerodynamic design characteristics of the RLV during hypersonic flight, characterizing induced loads during hypersonic re-entry into the atmosphere, recovering the vehicle from the sea, assessing the performance of the carbon fibre used in construction of the nose of the vehicle, and demonstrating first stage separation sequencing. 

According to the space agency’s last annual report, the agency has completed studies related to the rocket by carrying out various simulations. It also validated the on-board software and conducted a successful test of the solid booster motor (HS9) with Secondary Injection Thrust Vector Control system.

Comment
At present, there is no country that flies a winged spacecraft into space. The two countries that used such spacecrafts were USA and Russia. The US retired such shuttles in 2011, while Russia flew such plane only in 1989.

In fact, RLV will be competing against two private companies namely SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Blue Origin's New Shephard rocket, which have already partially tested re-usable space shuttles.

About ISRO

1. ISRO Stands for Indian Space Research Organisation
2. Dr Vikram A Sarabhai is considered as the founding father of space programmes in India.
3. ISRO was formed on August 15, 1969.
4. Department of Space (DOS) and the Space Commission were set up in 1972. ISRO was brought under DOS on June 1, 1972.
5. The prime objective of ISRO is to develop space technology and its application to various national needs.
6. Satellite Launch Vehicle-3 (SLV-3) is the first launch vehicle of India.
7. India’s first indigenous sounding rocket, RH-75, was launched on November 20, 1967.