India successfully launched the first technology demonstrator of indigenously made Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV), capable of launching satellites into orbit around earth and then re-enter the atmosphere, from Sriharikota near Chennai.

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. 

The RLV-TD or winged space plane then climed to another 20 km and began its descent. It re-entered to earth’s atmosphere at an hypersonic speed of more than 5 Mach and touched down the Bay of Bengal between Chennai and the Andaman archipelago. Known as hypersonic flight experiment, it was about 10 minutes mission from liftoff to splashdown.

An ISRO spokesman said the mission was accomplished successfully. “Everything went according to the projections” he said adding that the winged space plane will not be recovered from the sea.This successful experiment of the ISRO is only a very preliminary step towards developing reusable launch vehicles. Several flights of RLV-TD will have to be undertaken before it really becomes a reusable launch system to put satellites into orbit.

This project has been in the design board in one form or other for the past 10 years.  It was called AVATAR, SLE and some other names. This is in-fact the first attempt to boost it out of the drawing board and into the launch platform. It will need at-least a dozen successful launches, each validating a multitude of technologies before the system can be put in production.

                                                                     There are a multiple mission profiles for the proposed system. And it will infact bring down a significant portion of the launch cost down. Already the cost of launching a satellite or probe into LEO is way cheaper when using ISRO’s launch vehicle than say Ariane-space. But the cost shifts heavily in favour of the latter for a GTO. Which India herself uses often. There are several other technological benifits to the program, like Hypersonic flight profile study, Effective Heat Shielding, Autonomous Navigation and a lot more so called “Dual-USe” technologies can be spin-over.

I believe a hearty Congratulations are in order for the Project Team.