ISRO ready to test first runway landing experiment of reusable launch vehicle

The milestone (RLV-LEX) has to be achieved before the RLV ORE (Orbital Re-Entry Experiment) mission to acquire end-to-end reusable launch vehicle (RLV) technology capability.

Vipin Vijayan

First Published Nov 8, 2022, 6:32 PM IST | Last Updated Nov 8, 2022, 6:32 PM IST

Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman S Somanath has said that the space agency is all set for its first runway landing experiment (RLV-LEX) of Reusable Launch Vehicle-Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD) from an aeronautical test range in Karnataka's Chitradurga district.

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Somanath, also Secretary in the Department of Space, told the news agency Press Trust of India that the agency is assessing the weather. 'The climate is still not good. We are waiting for the wind and other systems to become benign. We will do that,' he said.

ISRO officials said that a helicopter would carry the RLV wing body to an altitude of three to five kilometres and release it about four to five kilometres ahead of the runway with horizontal velocity. On being released, the RLV is expected to glide, navigate towards the runway and land autonomously with the landing gear in the defence airfield near Chitradurga.

Sources in the Bengaluru-based national space agency earlier said that new systems like the parachute, hook beam assembly, landing gear, pseudolite and radar altimeter have been developed and qualified.

To recall, on May 23, 2016, ISRO accomplished its maiden RLV-TD HEX-01 (Hypersonic Flight Experiment-01) mission from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre SHAR and successfully demonstrated critical technologies for the design and flight testing of re-entry vehicles. However, the suborbital flight mission was designed to land at sea.

ISRO officials say that one of the critical technologies that the RLV-LEX will demonstrate would be the approach and autonomous landing on a runway. The milestone (RLV-LEX) has to be achieved before the RLV ORE (Orbital Re-Entry Experiment) mission to acquire end-to-end reusable launch vehicle (RLV) technology capability.

In ORE, an ascent vehicle derived from the existing GSLV and PSLV stages will take a wing body called Orbital Re-entry Vehicle (ORV) to an orbit. It will stay in orbit for a stipulated period before re-entering and landing on a runway autonomously with the landing gear.

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