Skyroot Aerospace conducts successful long duration test of cryogenic engine and also advances green fuel tech

India’s Skyroot Aerospace, yesterday announced it had conducted a long-duration test of a 3D-printed cryogenic engine, firing it for 200 seconds – an important milestone in developing the private space venture’s higher payload capacity rockets. The test also yielded vital data for advancing the company’s use of LNG – a greener alternative to the more widely used fuels today, the company said in a press release. Also in this brief, PhonePe, a Walmart group company in Bengaluru, yesterday launched Pincode, an app built on top of India’s Open Network for Digital Commerce. Notes: India’s Skyroot Aerospace, yesterday announced it had conducted a long-duration test of a 3D-printed cryogenic engine, firing it for 200 seconds – an important milestone in developing the private space venture’s higher payload capacity rockets. The endurance test of the engine, named 'Dhawan-II,' in honour of the late Satish Dhawan, a mathematician and aerospace engineer widely seen as a central figure in the development of India’s space programme, demonstrated “impressive performance results,” Skyroot said in a press release. The test was carried out at the Solar Industries propulsion test facility in Nagpur, Maharashtra, using Skyroot’s indigenously developed mobile cryogenic engine test pad. This achievement follows the November 2022 launch of Vikram – S, which made Skyroot the first Indian private company to successfully send a rocket into space. “The successful test of Dhawan-II is a landmark achievement for Skyroot and the Indian private space sector,” Skyroot’s Co-founder and CEO Pawan Kumar Chandana, said in the press release. The Dhawan-II engine advances the capabilities of Skyroot's first privately developed fully-cryogenic rocket engine, the 1.0 kN thrust Dhawan – I, which was successfully test-fired in November 2021. “This is a major milestone for our cryogenic propulsion programme, which will enhance the payload capacity of the Vikram series of space launch vehicles making them more modular to meet wider customer requirements,” Naga Bharath Daka, Co-founder and COO of Skyroot, added. The liquid and cryogenic propulsion programme at Skyroot is led by a former senior ISRO scientist, V. Gnanagandhi. Skyroot's cryogenic rocket engines use two high-performance rocket propellants, Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) and Liquid Oxygen (LoX), which require cryogenic temperatures (below -150° Celsius) for storage and operation. The technology being developed by Skyroot is currently mastered by only a handful of countries globally, the company says. LNG, which is more than 90 percent methane, and LoX, are considered green-burning propellants. They are environmentally friendly compared with the solid, semi-cryogenic and hypergolic propellants which are currently widely used in the rocket industry. Skyroot’s next space launch is that of the Vikram-I rocket, planned for the end of this year. The latest ground test takes Skyroot one step closer to making Vikram – II, an upgraded version of Vikram-I which uses a cryogenic upper-stage, launch-ready by next year. This engine development was partly supported by NITI Ayog’s ANIC-ARISE programme which promotes technologies including the use of green rocket propellants. Skyroot was founded in 2018 and the company has raised $68 million in funding so far, from investors including GIC, the founders of Greenko Group and angel investor Mukesh Bansal.