ISRO Chief: Next Flight Test of Cryo Engine Will Occur in a Year

ISRO Chairman K Radhakrishnan says that the next test flight of the agency’s new cryogenic engine should take place in about a year.

“A flight testing of the Indigenous Cryogenic Engine Stage, in April, and as you know we had some snags there. We went through a very detailed analysis as to what happens and why it happens and we have come to a couple of scenarios in which such a snag would have occurred and our immediate task is to confirm that through testing on the ground and then prepare for the next flight testing. This should happen in year from now,” he added.

The “snags” involved the engine not firing at all, resulting in it and an expensive communications satellite falling in the Bay of Bengal. India has been working on the advanced rocket technology for 17 years.

Despite the failure, Radhakrishnan says that ISRO still plans to use the cryogenic stage to launch Chandrayaan-2, a lunar orbiter and rover, by 2013.

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