STIF has been designed and fabricated in-house to test complete reusable rocket stages under flight-like conditions
Indian space-tech company Agnikul Cosmos has inaugurated two new facilities at its Assembly & Testing Facility in Chennai to strengthen its capabilities in reusable launch vehicle development and in-house manufacturing.
The Stage Testing & Inspection Facility (STIF) and Pressurant Tank Realisation, Over-wrapping and Outfitting Facility (PROOF) were inaugurated in the presence of Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, Gaganyaan astronaut.
STIF has been designed and fabricated in-house to test complete reusable rocket stages under flight-like conditions. The facility can conduct full-stage tests with propulsion and avionics integrated, including clusters of Agnikul’s patented single-piece, semi-cryogenic, electric pump-fed 3D-printed engines.
The facility supports thrust levels ranging from 1 kN to 200 kN, LOX sub-cooling down to 73 K, and full-duration burns of up to 150 seconds. It also enables post-flight inspection and requalification of recovered stages, supporting a repeatable build-test-fly-recover-inspect-requalify-and-fly-again cycle for reusable launch vehicles.
The PROOF facility, meanwhile, brings the manufacturing of high-pressure composite overwrapped pressure vessels in-house. It can produce more than 10 vessels per month, including vessels with capacities of up to 3,500 litres and pressure ratings of up to 350 bar. According to Agnikul, the facility will improve manufacturing control, reduce external dependencies, and accelerate production and design iterations.
Together, the two facilities expand Agnikul’s vertically integrated capabilities across propulsion, avionics, component manufacturing, stage-level testing, recovery assessment, and requalification.
“STIF gives us the ability to test complete stages for the duration of their mission and inspect and requalify recovered stages. This is an important capability as we work towards Mission-02,” said Srinath Ravichandran, Co-founder and CEO, Agnikul Cosmos. He added that PROOF further strengthens the company’s end-to-end in-house quality control.
Moin SPM, Co-founder and COO, Agnikul Cosmos, said that bringing high-pressure composite vessel manufacturing and stage-level testing in-house will give the company greater control over quality and turnaround time as it expands manufacturing capacity and works towards a higher launch cadence.
Agnikul already designs and manufactures its single-piece, 3D-printed semi-cryogenic engines in-house, along with avionics and other propulsion and vehicle systems.
The company’s Mission-01, launched on 30 May 2024, successfully demonstrated a controlled ascent using its single-piece 3D-printed engine and in-house autopilot architecture. With STIF and PROOF, Agnikul is now extending its in-house capabilities from individual components to complete-stage testing, recovery assessment, and critical pressure-vessel manufacturing as it works towards reusable launch systems.
