First 'Made in India' space shuttle test-launched by ISRO

BENGALURU: Early morning on Monday witnessed a scientific extravaganza as The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) successfully test-launched the first 'Made in India' space shuttle. The shuttle is called the Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV-TD) and it was launched from Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh, reports The Times of India. For the first time in history has ISRO launched a winged flight vehicle, which came back after its launch and landed on a virtual runway in the Bay of Bengal situated at a distance of 500 kilometres from the coast.

RLV-TD is a scaled-down model of the reusable launch vehicle. Weighing 1.75 tons, the space shuttle is 6.5 metre long and has an aero-plane like structure. 95 crores INR has been invested by the government in this project. The shuttle was sent into the atmosphere on a special rocket booster. The cost of access to space may come down by 10 times, if reusable rockets become a reality. This India's space endeavor is quite vital as this can be a significant step towards ending dependency on America as they have abandoned their resuable space shuttle project in 2011. Test launches have already been taken by SpaceX of Billionaire Elon Musk and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin. Powerful Falcon 9 rocket of SpaceX was tested rocket in December and a third launch and vertical landing by Blue Origin's New Shepard  was completed in April 2016.

A similar technology is also been developed by Russia, Japan and the European Space Agency. They all are in testing stages. This is the second time in succession that ISRO has made global headlines after 2013 when it successfully launched an unmanned mission to orbit Mars, which cost just $73 million compared to $671 million spent by NASA for its Maven Mars mission.

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