India successfully tested its first-ever indigenous space shuttle as its scale model – the Re-Usable Launch Vehicle – Technology Demonstrator or RLV-TD – was launched from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. Nearly 20 minutes after its lift-off, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) announced, “mission accomplished”.

Point to Note

• The 6.5 metre-long scale model of the re-usable launch vehicle weighs about 1.75 tonnes and was made at a cost of Rs. 95 crore. It was built at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre in Thiruvananthapuram by a team of 600 scientists over five years.
• ISRO plans to test two more such prototypes before the final version which will be about six times larger at around 40 metres and will take off around 2030.
• This was the first time that ISRO flew a winged body and brought it back to land on a make-shift runway. In further tests, an undercarriage will be placed to make it land, possibly at Sriharikota.
• No other country is currently operationally flying a winged spacecraft into space – the US retired its space shuttles in 2011 and the Russians flew theirs only once in 1989.
• Re-usable technology aims to help reduce the cost of launching objects into space by 10 times. It costs about $ 20,000 to send a kilogram in space currently.
• In a race to master re-usable technology for space shuttles, the RLV will be pitted against the likes of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Blue Origin’s New Shephard rocket – both the companies have already partially tested re-usable space shuttles.