Post by Dr. Brinda V

Here comes a post on ISRO’s Reusable Launch Vehicle Technology Demonstration Program. I was fortunate to be part of this R& D program and contribute to most challenging areas like #Missionplanning , #Trajectorydesign , and #Guidance and #Control of the demonstrator program 👉🏻Overview of ISRO’s RLV-TD Programme ✅ISRO’s Reusable Launch Vehicle – Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD) is a scaled-down prototype of a future reusable space plane, designed to master technologies needed for low-cost, fully reusable launch systems. The overall goal is a winged vehicle capable of returning from orbit and landing like an aircraft, reducing launch costs significantly. ✅Early in the programme, ISRO conducted the Hypersonic Flight Experiment (HEX) on 23rd May 2016, where RLV-TD reached over Mach 5 upon atmospheric re-entry, validating autonomous navigation, guidance, control, thermal protection and re-entry systems. However, that test was designed for a controlled landing on an imaginary runway over the sea , at a predefined location over the Bay of Bengal, not a runway touch down landing. ✅ISRO’s RLV-TD programme moved from suborbital tests in 2016 to runway landing experiments by innovating with a helicopter air-drop method. Achieving a precise runway landing is far more complex than re-entry into the sea. Standard launch trajectories could not reliably provide the precise altitude, velocity and flight-path angle corridor that runway landings require. 👉🏻Using the Chinook helicopter to position and release the RLV under controlled conditions allowed ISRO to successfully demonstrate high-speed autonomous landings — a key stepping stone toward future fully reusable orbital vehicles.