ISRO gearing up to mock Joe Biden once again in Jan 2023
Joe Bidden as a Congressman in 1990s had very strongly campaigned against sale of cryogenic engines by Russia to India and had said “I am confident that the Russian leaders will recognize the wisdom of stopping this sale once they see the risk of losing their economic aid. This is no minor sale; this is dangerous,” This was a sort of CAATSA on the Russians.
India then developed the required technology on its own, though it took time. Next by launching 36 satellites in one go, ISRO a few days back made the same chap, now the US President, eat Crow.
The Indian space agency is once again gearing up for launching the next set of 36 satellites of the UK-based Network Access Associated Ltd (OneWeb) in January 2023 by testing the crucial cryogenic engine of its rocket LVM3. So Shri Biden ji will get mocked again and again as OneWeb plans to have a constellation of 648 satellites in low earth orbit (LEO) to offer its broadband services across the world.
According to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the flight acceptance hot test of a CE-20 engine was successfully carried out for a duration of 25 seconds in the High Altitude Test facility of ISRO Propulsion Complex at Mahendragiri.
This engine is earmarked for the LVM3-M3 mission identified for the launch of the next set of 36 numbers of OneWeb India-1 satellites, ISRO said.
The cryogenic upper stage of the LVM3 vehicle (C25 stage) is powered by a CE-20 engine working with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen (LOX-LH2) propellants combination.
This engine develops a nominal thrust of 186.36 kN in vacuum.
The major objectives of the flight acceptance test were to confirm the integrity of the hardware, assessment of subsystems’ performance and tune the engine for meeting the mission requirements parameters for engine tuning for flight operation.
Analysis of test data confirmed the satisfactory performance of the engine systems.
This engine will be assembled to the C25 flight stage being integrated for the LVM3 M3 rocket.
ISRO’s commercial arm New Space India Ltd (NSIL) has signed a contra ct with OneWeb to launch 72 satellites in two phases for a launch fee of over Rs 1,000 crore, said Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman, OneWeb.
The orbiting of first set to 36 satellites happened successfully on Oct 23 from Sriharikota rocket port in Andhra Pradesh with LVM3 rocket also known as Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle MK-III (GSLV MK-III).
