Skyroot Aerospace Tests Key Rocket Motor Kalam 250 for Satellite Launch Later This Year

India’s space start-up Skyroot has achieved a major achievement. Skyroot has test-fired Stage-2 of Vikram-1 rocket. It has been said about this rocket that it will place a satellite in the Earth’s orbit at the end of the year. Stage-2 of Vikram-1 has been named Kalam-250. Let us know all the special things about it.

The Kalam-250 is a high strength carbon composite motor that will propel the rocket outside the Earth’s atmosphere and into the vacuum of space. According to the company, the test fire of Kalam-250 was conducted on ISRO’s Propulsion Test Bed located at the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh. The test fire lasted 85 seconds and achieved a sea-level thrust of 186 kilonewtons (kN). But when this thrust is measured in air, it will be 235 kilonewtons. That means the company has done a vacuum thrust test of 235kN in Kalam-250.

This test is considered very important for India’s progress in the space sector. Because this is the country’s first carbon composite motor tested at ISRO, and it is the largest propulsion system designed and manufactured by the private sector. Pawan Chandana, co-founder and CEO of Hyderabad-based Skyroot Aerospace, while talking about the company’s success, also mentioned the importance of the successful test fire.

He said the test parameters are within the desired bounds, and this success takes them one step closer to the launch of the Vikram-1 rocket. The Kalam-250 is a high strength carbon composite rocket motor that utilizes a solid fuel and high performance ethylene-propylene-diniterpolymer (EPDM) thermal protection system (TPS). Stage-2 has a carbon flex nozzle with precision electro-mechanical actuators. These control the thrust vector of the vehicle. With its help the rocket is able to reach the desired trajectory.