Bengaluru: Sometime in 1975, when I was in the 5th grade, I overheard some senior students talking excitedly about the launch of India’s first satellite, Aryabhata, by a Russian rocket. When engineers from the Indian Institutes of Technology were busy making contributions to the American space programmes, Isro was being built by talented engineers from some of India’s relatively obscure …
Hyderabad-based startup Skyroot Aerospace has successfully demonstrated the country’s first privately developed cryogenic rocket engine named Dhawan-1 after eminent rocket scientist Satish Dhawan. Speaking about the ground-based test, eminent rocket scientist V Gnanagandhi, who heads the cryogenic propulsion team at Skyroot, said, “The complex engine start and shut-off transients are perfectly smooth, combustion was very stable, and pressure was rock …
