ISRO successfully conducts landing experiment of the Reusable Launch Vehicle

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has successfully carried out the landing experiment of the Reusable Launch Vehicle-Technology Demonstration

(RLV-TD).

Key Highlights

The RLV-TD was dropped from a 4.5 km altitude using an Indian Air Forces (IAF) Chinook helicopter. The landing experiment of the RLV-TD was executed by ISRO as planned.
It further added that the release of the RLV was autonomous as it performed approach and landing maneuvers using Integrated Navigation, Guidance, and control system and completed an autonomous landing on the airstrip.
In a first in the world, a winged body has been carried to an altitude of 4.5 km by a helicopter and released for an autonomous landing on a runway.
The winged RLV-TD has been configured to act as a flying test bed for evaluating various technologies, namely, hypersonic flight, autonomous landing, and powered cruise flight.
In the future, this vehicle will be scaled up to become the first stage of India’s reusable two-stage orbital launch vehicle
RLV-TD was successfully flight tested in 2016, from Sriharikota validating. The critical technologies such as autonomous navigation, guidance and control, reusable thermal protection system, and re-entry mission management.
During this mission the vehicle landed on a hypothetical runway over the Bay of Bengal.

Therefore, the latest landing experiment is the second in the series of experimental flights of the programme.

What is a Reusable Launch Vehicle(RLV)?

Reusable launch vehicle (RLV) means a launch vehicle that is designed to return to Earth substantially intact. Therefore may be launched more than one time.

An RLV may also contain stages that may be recovered. By a launch operator for future use in the operation of a substantially similar launch vehicle.

Advantages: With the costs acting as a major deterrent to space exploration, a reusable launch vehicle is considered a low-cost, reliable, and on-demand mode of accessing space.

Significance of RLV-TD Programme

The main rationale for developing a reusable system is to bring down, the costs of satellite launch, and to increase the frequency of launches.
Satellites and scientific instruments need to ride on rockets to go into space.
These are of the use-and-throw kind, which mostly fall into the sea after doing their job, or sometimes float uselessly in space, adding to space debris.
Reusable rockets can save the costs of building a new vehicle for every launch, and also the manufacturing time. Thus enabling more frequent launches.
It is estimated that RLV, once fully developed in about a decade, could bring down launch costs 8-10 times.
Currently, it costs Rs 6-8 lakh to send a 1 kg payload into a low earth orbit.
The cost advantage also depends on the degree of reusability built into the vehicle.
A fully reusable vehicle would deliver payloads into orbits and return to Earth completely intact.

Conclusion

The actual RLV, when it is developed, would have to land on a runway. ISRO has said a 5-km runway, more than double the length of the longest in the country, would have to be built for it.