India's Agnikul Cosmos Launches Agnibaan SoRTed-01: Breakthrough in Additive Manufacturing for Semi-Cryogenic Liquid Engines

[Jayetsena]

What happened after 1+ minutes? Was it destroyed?

Subh subh bolo bhai...

 

[DDG-80]

Agnikul Cosmos aims for early 2025 launches following successful test-flight of Agnibaan rocket​

After the successful test-flight of Agnibaan SOrTeD, Chennai-based space start-up Agnikul Cosmos is hoping to start launching satellites early next year.

In an interview with PTI, Agnikul co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Srinath Ravichandran said the 3D-printed semi-cryogenic engines and the rocket will offer quick turnaround for customers who will be able to have customised launch vehicles for their satellites.

After the successful test-flight of Agnibaan SOrTeD, Chennai-based space start-up Agnikul Cosmos is hoping to start launching satellites early next year.

In an interview with PTI, Agnikul co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Srinath Ravichandran said the 3D-printed semi-cryogenic engines and the rocket will offer quick turnaround for customers who will be able to have customised launch vehicles for their satellites.

"Nine to 12 months I would say. Probably by the end of this financial year or the early part of the next financial year is what we are targeting," Ravichandran said when asked about the commercial orbital launch of the Agnibaan rocket.

The first test flight of Agnibaan SOrTeD (suborbital technology demonstrator) on May 30, which lasted for 66 seconds, came after four unsuccessful attempts.

After the successful test-flight of Agnibaan SOrTeD, Chennai-based space start-up Agnikul Cosmos is hoping to start launching satellites early next year.

In an interview with PTI, Agnikul co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Srinath Ravichandran said the 3D-printed semi-cryogenic engines and the rocket will offer quick turnaround for customers who will be able to have customised launch vehicles for their satellites.

"Nine to 12 months I would say. Probably by the end of this financial year or the early part of the next financial year is what we are targeting," Ravichandran said when asked about the commercial orbital launch of the Agnibaan rocket.

The first test flight of Agnibaan SOrTeD (suborbital technology demonstrator) on May 30, which lasted for 66 seconds, came after four unsuccessful attempts.

"It was a big sense of relief. I think we got a lot of learning in differentiating between building a vehicle and launching a vehicle," said Ravichandran, whose idea to use 3D printing technology to build engines and rockets led to Agnikul Cosmos, a space sector start-up incubated at the IIT Madras Research Park in 2017.

The other co-founders were Moin SPM, an operations specialist and Satyanarayanan Chakravarthy, a professor at IIT Madras and Head of the National Centre for Combustion Research and Development.

Women engineers Saraniya Periaswamy, the Vehicle Director for Agnibaan SOrTeD and Umamaheswari. K, the Project Director of the first Mission played a key role in the test flight.

Agnibaan SOrTeD was a vertical ascent flight unlike sounding rockets that are launched using guiding rails placed at a particular angle.

"Seven seconds after lift-off we checked the health of the vehicle and that is when the auto-pilot kicked in. Little bit into the flight, it started moving over the ocean and performed the pitch-over manoeuvre and then continued on its planned trajectory," Ravichandran said, sharing details of Agnibaan SOrTeD's maiden flight.

"Once it reached about 60 seconds or so, we entered the wind biasing manoeuvre, where we solve the wind speed and actually fly into the wind so there is not much wind load on the vehicle," he said.

After the wind-biasing manoeuvre, the rocket continued to fly till burnout and dropped back into the ocean.

"There was continuous radar tracking of the vehicle. All the devices and instruments enabling that also worked really well," Ravichandran said.

The next steps for Agnikul is to master the technology of firing multiple engines together and carry out tests for stage separation.

"We will have to figure out two things. Our orbital rocket has multiple engines fired together. So, that will have to be tested out on the ground. And the stage separation. SOrTeD was a single stage vehicle. The orbital vehicle will have two stages. So stage separation has to be tested," Ravichandran said.

"We are already in the middle of building rigs at our facility. We will take six-seven months to get that and from there we will be able to target the orbital mission in the next three months," he said.

According to Ravichandran, the demand for small satellites was high with as many as 30-35 tonnes of payloads put in low earth orbits every year.

He said small satellites have a low life-span and the same need to be replenished for continued earth-imaging or communications applications.

The Agnibaan launch vehicle is designed to be compatible with the mobile launchpad called Dhanush and can be configured to accommodate payloads ranging from 30 kg to 300 kg, ensuring versatility across a wide range of mission requirements.

https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/agnikul-cosmos-eyes-early-2025-satellite-launches/cid/2024185

 

[DDG-80]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1797224512117002708

 

[Optimal_Control]

Good to see you here again buddy. Very good to hear about your success.

Yes indeed, this is part of ongoing expansion of say global capability centres in India.

IITs are major patent contributor to PCT filings internationally, so what you mention is not surprising:

Country

India, Country Profiles, Information by Country, Contact Information, WIPO Office, Case studies, Outreach campaigns, Statistics, Legal Information, Madrid System procedures, Hague System procedures, PCT System procedures, National IP laws and regulations, WIPO bodies, Membership of, WIPO...

www.wipo.int

https://www.wipo.int/edocs/statistics-country-profile/en/in.pdf

View attachment 44916

India needs to achieve some serious breakthroughs here (if you look at what PRC has achieved with say Huawei, which alone files about 20,000 patents internationally in same couple years....though of course some of these are IP spread over many patents so there is proliferation phenomenon).

I talk about IP w.r.t PRC, Japan and US here earlier, @Oscar and @FuturePAF and others may be interested to read:

India’s Quiet Push to Steal More of China’s iPhone Business

Apple moves closer to China despite supply chain shifts Japan, Taiwan and U.S. supplier numbers dip as iPhone maker expands in Southeast Asia CHENG TING-FANG and LAULY LI, Nikkei Asia tech correspondentsAPRIL 26, 2024 04:00 JST APRIL 26, 2024 04:00 JST TAIPEI -- Apple is deepening its ties...

defencepk.com

If we look at India, in 2022 it "imported/licensed" about 10 billion USD worth of IP and "exported" about 1 billion USD.

World Bank Open Data

Free and open access to global development data

data.worldbank.org

World Bank Open Data

Free and open access to global development data

data.worldbank.org

Only with serious breakthrough in some spheres in concrete way we get the sudden IP ecosystem of scale that PRC has with say Huawei/ZTE (i.e telecoms IP)....if you look at how it jumped from its 1 billion a year to 10+ billion a year now.

With GCC model though India might see good numbers reflect on the service side of things compared to direct IP payment/receipts (and patents) though. We will have to see how things go this decade.

Hi @Nilgiri
Hope you are doing good? I was inactive for a long time (however I did use to check out the posts sometimes). I feel, we are good 10-15 years behind China in terms of bigger IP eco-system. My main point was that, the IP activity has kicked off in India and it leads to a positive feedback in Indian economy where a lot of MNCs get their R&D done in India. Btw, I recently filed my 7th patent and I have developed some novel methods which I could talk in a different discussion .

 

[Nilgiri]

Hi @Nilgiri
Hope you are doing good? I was inactive for a long time (however I did use to check out the posts sometimes). I feel, we are good 10-15 years behind China in terms of bigger IP eco-system. My main point was that, the IP activity has kicked off in India and it leads to a positive feedback in Indian economy where a lot of MNCs get their R&D done in India. Btw, I recently filed my 7th patent and I have developed some novel methods which I could talk in a different discussion .

Doing well buddy. Thanks!

regd. extended discussion....I always suggest the book thread for fleshing out the quality stuff to spur good professional interaction over time leisurely as you would like:

What book are you reading?

I came across it again in my emergency archive I keep with all kind of conversations/debates I have had too with folks. @Joe Shearer A few days later censorship was imposed on newspapers. The Delhi edition of the Indian Express on 28 June, carried a blank editorial, while the Financial Express...

defencepk.com

You may find the earlier conversation there (29 pages in total now) also to your interest.