The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully conducted the landing experiment of Pushpak Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) at Aeronautical Test Range in Chitradurga district in Karnataka on 22 March 2024.
Key points
- The winged vehicle called Pushpak landed precisely on the runway after being released from 4.5 kilometre altitude.
- This is ISRO’s second series of RLV landing experiment and this time, the RLV exhibited autonomous landing capability and undertook more difficult manoeuvres with dispersions.
- The high-speed landing conditions and approach used by RLV while returning from space was simulated during the mission.
- In April 2023, ISRO conducted the series of experiments with RLV-TD.
- It was part of efforts at developing essential technologies for a fully reusable launch vehicle to enable low-cost access to space.
