The World-First Autonomous Landing Experiment You Need to Know About!

India's space agency, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), has achieved a major milestone in its mission to send reusable rockets into space. The agency successfully conducted an experiment known as the 'Reusable Launch Vehicle Autonomous Landing Mission (RLV LEX)' on Sunday, which it believes will propel the country forward in its space program. The technique used to launch the vehicle was a world-first, where a winged body was carried to an altitude of 4.5 km by a helicopter and then released for autonomous landing on a runway. ISRO, along with the Defence Research and Development Organisation and the Indian Air Force, conducted the experiment in Karnataka’s Chitradurga district. The RLV took off as an underslung load of a Chinook Helicopter of the Indian Air Force and was then released to carry out an autonomous landing on a runway, under conditions similar to a space re-entry vehicle's landing. This experiment, which involved high-speed, unmanned, precise landing from the same return path, was successful and met almost all the objectives of the landing experiment defined long back. ISRO Chairman Dr. S Somanath said that the success of the experiment has brought India closer to having its reusable rockets and landing craft for specific mission goals. The RLV is essentially a space plane that requires an approach at high glide angles, which necessitates a landing at high velocities of 350 kmph. ISRO said the LEX utilized several indigenous systems such as localized navigation systems, instrumentation and sensor systems. India has been making steady progress in its space exploration program, and this latest success will enable the country to reduce the cost of payload delivery to low earth orbit by 80%. The Return Flight Experiment and other related tests of the RLV are also being planned, making it a significant step towards India's ambitious goal of sending reusable rockets into space.