BENGALURU: Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) on Monday said it has delivered the biggest cryogenic propellant tank (C32 LH2) ever fabricated by the company to ISRO, much ahead of the contractual schedule.
It's a developmental cryogenic propellant tank of aluminium alloy designed for improving the payload capability of GSLV MK-III.
The diametric tank is of eight-meter length to load 5755 Kg propellant in the 89 cubic meter volume. The total length of 115 meters was weld carried out in the tank. This also goes on to display HAL's prowess in technologies required for fabricating welded propellant tank of Aluminium ally to such stringent quality requirement.
HAL is also building hardware for full-fledged launch vehicle GSLV Mk-III for Gaganyaan program, yet a source from HAL told The New Indian Express that the tank delivery had little to do with India's first manned mission Gaganyaan. Meanwhile, ISRO also has projects such as Chandrayaan 3 and Aditya and interplanetary Venus mission lined up.
To support the manned mission, HAL has also developed a Crew Atmospheric Re-entry Experiment, PAD Abort test for Crew Escape.HAL is also setting up necessary infrastructure and facilities for new projects with ISRO like PS2/GS2 integration, Semi-Cryo structure fabrication and manufacture of cryo and semi cryo engines.
The tank was symbolically handed over by M S Velpari, Director (Operations), HAL to Dr V Narayanan, Director (LPSC), ISRO. S Somanath, Director (VSSC) and other senior scientists from ISRO, participated virtually.
Velpari expounded on HAL's preparedness to venture into the complete realization of PSLV & GSLV launch vehicles progressively from raw material stage to launch stage including managing the entire supply chain of ISRO.
The two organisations have been collaborating for 50 years on space programmes, with the DPSU suppying critical structures, tankages, satellite structures for the launch vehicles PSLV, GSLV-MkII and GSLV-MkIII.