Reusable launcher offers myriad benefits
The successful Reusable Launch Vehicle Autonomous Landing Mission (RLV-LEX) experiment of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on April 2 potentially offers a bouquet of benefits for the space and defence sectors in the coming years.
The experiment—at the Aeronautical Test Range (ATR) of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) in Challakere in Karnataka’s Chitradurga district—involved a Chinook helicopter of the Indian Air Force lifting the RLV (a winged space plane) to an altitude of 4.6 km, and releasing it to power its way back to the ATR runway and safely landing in an autonomous mode.
The successful return landing implies that the space plane can be repeatedly used for subsequent satellite launches without building a new launcher to send the next batch of satellites into space.
For the space sector, it significantly reduces satellite launch costs. ISRO scientists are looking at an 80% cut in launch costs for low-earth orbit missions. For the defence sector, the RLV can be used as an autonomous flight transport system to deliver material from one location to another. Many more potent applications can be adapted subsequently.
The other benefit is that this concept of space launch can drastically cut the contribution of rocket parts to the burgeoning space debris in low earth orbits, which is already posing hazards to space missions. ISRO’s revenues may boom in relative and exponential terms with this technology. The RLV’s reusable nature means saving a large part of the cost involved in building new rockets. With this enhanced capability, ISRO could expect higher revenues by launching more low-earth orbit satellites per year, promising to attract more domestic and foreign clients for satellite launches.
The RLV is not like the US shuttles, which needed a rocket to launch them into space. However, more experiments are in the pipeline to ensure that the RLV succeeds in payload delivery to low earth orbits. The technology demonstrator in May 2016 was able to achieve a peak altitude of 64.8 km, while it should be able to reach an altitude of 350–600 km in a real mission mode to low earth orbits.
Besides, a larger space plane would enable accommodating multiple satellites in a single mission. Once that is successfully achieved, all the benefits—technological and financial— could be reaped.