SRIHARIKOTA — India’s reusable launch vehicle programme crossed a quiet but consequential milestone on Wednesday, when the winged technology-demonstrator prototype completed its third consecutive autonomous runway landing, touching down within two metres of its target marker.
The test profile was the most demanding yet. Released from a carrier helicopter at 4.5 kilometres — nearly twice the altitude of the first campaign — the vehicle executed an unpowered glide, a series of energy-management S-turns, and a fully autonomous approach and flare, all in crosswinds that exceeded the previous test envelope.
Programme scientists said the three-landing streak validates the guidance, navigation and control stack that will scale directly to the orbital vehicle. “The airframe is a subscale demonstrator, but the brain is the real article,” a senior scientist said at the post-test briefing.
The economics at stake are significant. A reusable first stage and orbiter could cut the cost of placing a kilogram in low Earth orbit by an order of magnitude — the difference, analysts say, between India hosting the world’s small-satellite launch market and merely participating in it.
Next on the manifest: a powered-descent test using the vehicle’s air-breathing propulsion module, scheduled for early next year, followed by the first suborbital flight of the full-scale orbiter structure. The programme remains, officially, on schedule for an orbital attempt in 2028 — a date that, for once, nobody in the control room was hedging.
