17 MAY 2016

Ø   The first technology demonstrator (TD) launch of the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV), or the spaceplane in popular parlance, will take place on May 23 at 9.30 a.m. from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC), Sriharikota, according to ISRO officials. Visually, the RLV-TD is a rocket-aircraft combination measuring about 17 m, whose first stage is a solid propellant booster rocket and the second stage is a 6.5 m long aircraft-like winged structure sitting atop the rocket. In RLV-TD that is awaiting launch at SHAR, the first stage, weighing about 9 tonnes, is merely the Satellite Launch Vehicle (SLV-3) flown in the 1980s. The vehicle will take off like a rocket and the RLV will be taken to a height of 70 km and where the booster will release the vehicle to carry out its manoeuvres. According to Dr. K. Sivan, director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Thiruvanathapuram, where the RLV was designed, assembled and where it underwent basic electrical, hydraulic and “sign check” tests, the objective is to achieve hypersonic speeds to basically test the hypersonic aero-thermodynamic characterisation of the winged body’s re-entry, its control and guidance systems, autonomous mission management to land at a specific location at sea and testing of “hot structures” that make up the structure of the RLV. The test is, therefore, termed Hypersonic Experiment 1 (HEX-1). A conventional launch vehicle (LV), says Dr. Sivan, spends the lowest time of its flight in the atmosphere, whereas the RLV system spends all the time in the atmosphere. Also, while an LV experiences limited flight regime of say Mach 0 to Mach 2 or so, the RLV experiences a much wider range of flight regimes. Hence the technology of an RLV is much more complex basically arising from the design of the control and guidance systems, he pointed out. In HEX1, the winged RLV is otherwise a dummy with no powered flight of its own. At the end of the HEX1 mission, the aircraft will land in sea. However, the ultimate objective of the RLV programme of ISRO is to enable the vehicle traverse a very wide range of flight regimes from Mach 0 to Mach 25 based on air-breathing propulsion for achieving two-stage-to-orbit (TSTO) launch capability. The integrated test system (booster plus the RLV-TD) is already at the SDSC, Sriharikota. Prior to being moved to Sriharikota, the RLV subsystem underwent acoustic tests at the National Aerospace Laboratories of the CSIR (CSIR-NAL) and the booster went as a separate subsystem directly from VSSC. At SDSC the two were mated together. Dr. A.S. Kiran Kumar, ISRO Chairman, called the first test launch HEX1 “a very preliminary step” and stressed that “we have to go a long way” before it could be called a re-usable launch system. “But these are very essential steps we have to take,” he said. Asked whether the Indian reusable launch system was aimed at bringing down the launch cost, the ISRO Chairman said: “It will bring down the cost. Towards that, we will have to work and go through these initial steps.” The present design is basically “a flying test bed to evaluate various technologies, namely hypersonic flight, autonomous landing, powered cruise flight and hypersonic flight using air-breathing propulsion using a scramjet engine”, according to ISRO website. The HEX series of experiments will be followed by the landing experiment (LEX), return flight experiment and scramjet propulsion experiment (SPEX). The basic design of a scramjet has already been evolved. A test launch of the engine aboard a sounding rocket, which will achieve a flight regime of up to Mach 8, will take place some place in June at SHAR, Dr. Sivan said. It may be recalled that the RLV-TD had undergone a review in 2012 itself and had been cleared for launch in late 2013. According to Dr. K. Sivan, director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), there were essentially three reasons for the delay of three years. One — though ISRO had planned for a certain schedule of launches, because of some unforeseen failures in GSLV launches, the entire schedule got affected. Another chief reason was the realisation of the necessity of carrying out additional tests of the RLV system. Among these was a very important test called “Iron Bird” simulations. What is done here is to connect the entire RLV system mechanically as in flight condition and carry out the simulations. Here the actual flight profiles are simulated using mechanical actuators (complete with hydraulic plumbing lines), control electronics and the entire Navigation and Guidance Control (NGC) hardware and software developed at ISRO. This test was not included in the earlier Loop Simulation runs for RLV-TD. The second is related to the use of “hot structures” in RLV. In conventional launch vehicles, the structural elements are called cold structures because temperature is not a criterion there. Here, however, thermo-structural stability of the elements becomes important, Dr. Sivan pointed out. This was also not there in earlier considerations. A conventional LV, for instance, undergoes structural and thermal tests separately. “These are very time-consuming tests,” pointed out Dr. Sivan, “wherein most intricate and detailed data have to be obtained.” For “hot structures”, such as the nose cap, the RLV uses carbon-carbon composite structure.

Ø  A team of wildlife experts submitted a crucial report Monday, on which hinges the fate of the first-ever inter-State river linking project since India’s independence. The submitted report — not yet public — warns of the dangers to the ecology and animal life due to the proposed Ken-Betwa project. The main feature of the project is a 230-km long canal connecting the Ken and Betwa rivers which will irrigate 3.5 lakh hectares of drought-prone Bundelkhand. However, it will also inundate about 400 of the 4300-hectare Panna Tiger reserve in Madhya Pradesh. The report neither endorses nor disapproves of the Ken-Betwa project but notes that if the government were to go ahead it ought to ensure that the proposed canal does not hinder tiger movement and that there should be enough habitable forest land developed to compensate for the loss of tiger reserve land. The Ken-Betwa river interlinking project is being vigorously promoted by the incumbent NDA government as the first in a series of projects to transfer surplus water from certain rivers into deficient ones and improve irrigation as well as hydropower availability. Given the threat to the tiger reserve, the Environment Ministry, whose clearance is mandatory for the project, tasked the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) with an expert analysis on the environmental impact. Apart from threats to the tiger habitat, there are also threats to gharial, hyenas and vultures that live within the sanctuary.

Ø  China’s announcement that it intends to oppose India’s membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group unless it agrees to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) comes just a month ahead of the NSG’s annual plenary session. For the past year, India had made admission to the 48-member NSG a focus of its international outreach, though membership has been a goal since the India-U.S. civil nuclear agreement was signed in 2008. Several major countries including the U.S., Russia, Germany, the U.K. and Australia have openly backed the bid, despite the fact that India is not a signatory to the NPT, widely considered to be a key criterion for NSG membership. In 2015, India reached out to many other NSG members, including those such as Ireland and Sweden that are members of the pro-disarmament group, the New Agenda Coalition, and have traditionally been opposed to its admission. The visit to New Delhi of NSG Chairperson Rafael Grossi in October 2015, when he spoke of taking the request forward, was seen to be a positive sign in this effort. Thus the disappointment after the signal from Beijing last week. Clearly, China’s stand is a combination of its fraught relations with India as well as its desire that its “all-weather friend” Pakistan not be disadvantaged in the process. While this ignores Pakistan’s well-known proliferation record, it also points to failure on the part of Indian diplomats tasked with convincing China that admitting India to the NSG is the logical thing to do. However, this is not the end of the road for India’s NSG ambitions. Indeed, it is a signal that more persuasive diplomacy is needed to bring around naysayers such as China from blocking New Delhi’s bid, much as was done to bring China on board to get India the NSG waiver in 2008. For this, the government must begin an internal debate to appraise its own position on the NSG membership, and to figure out how far it is willing to go to secure it. It will, first, have to reckon with the possibility that NSG members could object to an “India-specific” ruling, and that other non-NPT countries, including Pakistan and Israel, may also benefit from any flexibility that is shown in India’s case. Second, there is a possibility that India could receive a “second class” membership, and not be considered a “nuclear weapons state” by the NSG. The third, and most important, point is that membership of the NSG, a body set up specifically in response to India’s nuclear test in 1974, will eventually require India to curtail its nuclear weapons programme. U.S. President Barack Obama’s comments, made after the Nuclear Security Summit, that the nuclear arsenals of India and Pakistan are taking them in the “wrong direction”, underscore this. If India aims to be part of the elite NSG club, it must have a realistic idea of what the fee for full membership is, added to the diplomatic outreach required to win support from China. A full and transparent cost-benefit analysis is crucial.