NEW DELHI: It has been almost five years since Nasa sent its Space Shuttle on its final flight into orbit, but a new generation of reusable spacecraft are preparing the ground for a new race into the heavens.
Counties including Japan and Russia have joined private companies like Blue Origin and SpaceX in building reusable space rockets, and now India is the latest country to step up to the challenge.
It has launched a 23 feet long scale model of its own version of the space shuttle from a spaceport in the south east of the country.
The rocket booster pictured, carrying the Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV-TD) on top. ‘The exercise (on Monday) will enable us to collect data on hypersonic speed, autonomous landing’ and other useful information, Dr Sivan,, director of a space research centre, said before the launch
The rocket booster carrying RLV-TD lifted off from the First Launch Pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota at 7am local time (1.30am GMT) on Monday.
After a successful flight of 91.1 seconds, the rocket burnt out.
After this both HS9 rocket, with the RLV-TD mounted on its top, coasted to a height of about 35 miles (56 km).
At that height, RLV-TD separated from HS9 booster and further ascended to a height of about 41 miles (65 km).
The move marks a crucial step towards developing a full-scale resuable model to launch satellites in the future and highlights India’s presence as a serious space faring nation.
The country’s first model space shuttle on Monday morning, as it bids to join the race to one day make rockets as reusable as airplanes.
‘The lift-off was at 7am (01.30 GMT) from the first launch pad here,’ said India’s space chief Devi Prasad Karnik.
‘We have successfully accomplished the RLV mission as a technology demonstrator.’
The scale-model shuttle was propelled 41 miles (65 km) into the atmosphere using a 15-tonne rocket before splashing down 10 minutes later into the Bay of Bengal, 310 miles (500km) from the Sriharikota space port.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has developed the 1.7-tonne (1,542 kilogram) winged shuttle reportedly on a miniscule budget of one billion rupees ($14/£9.7 million) over a five-year period.
‘After a successful flight of 91.1second, HS9 burn out occurred, following which both HS9 and RLV-TD mounted on its top coasted to a height of about 56 km,’ the space agency confirmed.
‘At that height, RLV-TD separated from HS9 booster and further ascended to a height of about 65km.
‘From that peak altitude of 65 km, RLV-TD began its descent followed by atmospheric re-entry at around Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound).
The vehicle’s Navigation, Guidance and Control system accurately steered the vehicle during this phase for safe descent.
‘After successfully surviving a high temperatures of re-entry with the help of its Thermal Protection System (TPS), RLV-TD successfully glided down to the defined landing spot over Bay of Bengal, at a distance of about 450km from Sriharikota, thereby fulfilling its mission objectives.’
The vehicle was successfully tracked during its flight from ground stations at Sriharikota and a shipborne terminal, and total flight duration from launch to landing of this mission of the delta winged RLV-TD, lasted for about 770seconds.
‘In this flight, critical technologies such as autonomous navigation, guidance & control, reusable thermal protection system and re-entry mission management have been successfully validated,’ the agency said.
But scientists hope that subsequent larger version, expected to be six times the size, will be launched over the next decade and will make it safely back to Earth.
The rocket booster carrying RLV-TD lifted off from the First Launch Pad at Satish Dhawan Space Centre, Sriharikota, also known as Sriharikota Spaceport (map pictured) on Monday morning
‘In subsequent test flights, we will attempt to land the reusable vehicle at a specific location on land like an aircraft does on a runway so that we can again use it for launching more satellites,’ Dr K. Sivan, director of a space research centre developing the vehicles at ISRO, told AFP.
‘The exercise (on Monday) will enable us to collect data on hypersonic speed, autonomous landing’ and other useful information, Dr Sivan said before the launch.
India faces stiff competition including from global companies which are developing their own reusable rockets after Nasa retired its space shuttle programme in 2011.
Reusable rockets would cut costs and waste in the space industry, which currently loses millions of dollars in jettisoned machinery after each launch.
Billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin have already successfully undertaken their own test launches.
SpaceX has even carried out lucrative Nasa and military contracts already using its Dragon capsule to travel to the ISS.
Russia, Japan and the European Space Agency are also developing similar technology and are in testing stages.
SpaceX has managed to land three rockets from space back on Earth – two on sea and one on land, while Blue Origin’s New Shepard successfully completed a third launch and vertical landing in April this year.