ISRO will test liquid stage later this month: Radhakrishnan

Chennai: After the successful static testing of Solid Propellant Booster Rocket Stage S-200 for GSLV Mk III Launch Vehicle at the spaceport of Sriharikota, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) would test the liquid stage (two liquid engines with 110 tonnes of propellants) at the Liquid Propulsion Centre at Mahendragiri in Tamil Nadu later this month.

Talking to reporters after receiving the Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) at the fifth convocation of SRM University here, ISRO Chairman K Radhakrishnan said ''we are in the final stages of preparation for the tests.''

''The preparations are on at Mahendragiri. Initially we will have a short duration test for 14 seconds this month. After analysing all the performance, we will have the long duration test for about 200 seconds. This would be a week or ten days after the short duration test,'' Dr Radhakrishnan added.

''It would take about a week or ten days to analyse all the data of the short duration test. After studying its data in detail and if all the parameters are successful, then we will go for the long duration test,'' he noted.

It may be recalled that ISRO successfully conducted the static test of its largest solid booster - S200 - at SHAR range on January 24. The successful test of S200 makes it the third largest solid booster in the world, next to the RSRM solid booster of Space Shuttle and P230 solid booster of ARIANE-5.