Friday, March 29, 2024

ISRO’s LVM3 rocket gains more lifting power; here’s how much it can carry

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The latest test of India’s existing cryogenic engine ‘CE-20’ adds more muscle to India’s biggest and heaviest rocket, the LVM3 (earlier known as GSLV Mk3). The test has proven that the launch vehicle’s payload capacity or ability to carry more cargo to space can be increased.  

On request, an ISRO Official elaborated to WION about the major takeaways from the rocket engine test carried out by the Indian space agency on November 9.  

The indigenously designed and developed LVM3 rocket has had a design load of carrying 4 tonnes to Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) and almost 10 tonnes to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). However, the rocket has so far, in five launches to date, not flown with a full payload.  

As the payload (satellite) is made for a certain purpose/mission, it would have a particular mass and it need not be as much as the entire carrying capacity of the rocket.  

In terms of the heaviest payloads carried by the LVM3 rocket, it had lifted 3.85 tonnes to GTO during Chandrayaan-2, India’s second Lunar mission, and 5.8 tonnes to LEO, for the recent October-end commercial launch for ‘OneWeb’. This means that the capability to lift more payload exists, but the vehicle has not yet had an opportunity to do so.  

According to the ISRO Official, the latest test has further increased the design load of the LVM3 rocket. In layman’s terms, the test has given ISRO the confidence to carry more payloads on LVM3 than the current limits.  

“After this test, the design load of LVM3 to GTO is around 4.5 tonnes (up from 4 tons) and the design load to GTO is around 10.65 tonnes,” the ISRO official explained.  

In terms of the engine being tested at a higher thrust, the official stated that it was good increase —-from the earlier 19 tonnes to 21.8 tonnes. The higher thrust is obtained by increasing the quantity of fuel being stored in the tanks and also by increasing the rate of flow of fuel to the engine.  

“The propellant loading(fuel) was earlier 28 tonnes and now we are using 32 tonnes of fuel” the official added.  

In order to increase the payload carrying capacity of the LVM3 rocket, ISRO is testing the CE-20 engine at higher thrusts and also working on developing a new Semi-cryogenic engine ‘SC-120’, which is meant to replace the existing L110 stage on the LVM3 rocket.  

The GSLV Mk3 rocket or LVM3 is a three-stage heavy lift launch vehicle developed by ISRO. The vehicle has two solid ‘S200’ strap-on motors (burns solid fuel), ‘L110’ core-stage liquid booster (burns a combination of liquid fuels) and a ‘C25’ cryogenic upper stage (burns liquid hydrogen with liquid oxygen). 

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