Scramjet rocket engine test puts India in elite club

Usually rocket engines carry both fuel (hydrogen) and oxidiser on board for combustion, but these newly developed engines with air-breathing propulsion system will use oxygen from the atmosphere thereby reducing the lift-off mass of the vehicle. It will also help to bring down launch costs substantially. 

“The test fire took place around 6 am from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, it was successful,” an official said. 

After a smooth countdown of 12 hours, the solid rocket booster, also referred to as Advanced Technology Vehicle (ATV), carrying the scramjet Engines lifted off at 6 am, with a weight of over 3,277 kg, and ending a 300 seconds-flight, touched down in the Bay of Bengal, about 320 kms from Sriharikota. ATV is a two-stage spin stabilised launcher with identical solid motors (based on Rohini RH560 sounding rocket) as the first as well as the second stage (booster and sustainer), ISRO said. The twin scramjet engines were mounted on the back of the second stage. Once the second stage reached the desired conditions for engine “Start-up”, necessary actions were initiated to ignite the scramjet engines and they functioned for about 5 seconds, it said adding that Sunday’s ATV flight operations were based on a pre-programmed sequence. 

The important flight events - burn out of booster rocket stage, ignition of second stage solid rocket, functioning of scramjet engines for 5 seconds followed by burn out of the second stage -- took place exactly as planned, ISRO said. 

The vehicle was successfully tracked during its flight from the ground stations at Sriharikota.