What are a scramjet engine and a scramjet rocket? Which countries are equipped with this and how did India get this technology?

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India is the fourth country to perform flight tests of scramjet engines after the United States, Russia, and the European Space Agency.

What is a scramjet engine

Rocket engines typically carry both fuel and oxidizers for combustion, but engines developed with an air-breathing propellant system use oxygen from the atmosphere.

The Scramjet engine uses hydrogen as a fuel (which it carries with it completely) and uses oxygen from the atmosphere as an oxidizer that is necessary to burn hydrogen.

Advantages of Scramjet Engine:

● Lightweight will reduce the space expenditure by up to 90 percent due to the lighter weight of the current rocket.

● More payload can be sent by a rocket.

● Rockets can be reused.

● With the help of Scramjet technology, the rocket can move at 6 times the speed.

● Large size satellites can also be sent with a small rocket.

Come to the characteristics of the Mazet engine, let us know what India did?

After joining the select club of India, on Sunday, 28 August 2016, India successfully tested its Futuristic Scramjet (Supersonic Combination Ramjet) rocket engine, which can cut the cost of rocket launch manifold by using oxygen from the atmosphere. And can help the Indian Department of Space Research to design advanced air.

Mission :

The first experimental mission of the Scramjet engine was successfully carried out at 6 am on August 28, 2016, from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.

It has yet to prove an important milestone for designing and developing advanced air-breathing engines, including for its future space transport system.

what happened :

After a smooth 12-hour calculation, a solid rocket booster advanced technology vehicle carrying scramjet engines flew at 6 am and ended the 300-second flight, about 320 km from Sriharikota in the Bay of Bengal, out of the city headquarters. has left.

Important flight events - burning from booster rocket stage, ignition of second stage solid rocket, working of Scramjet engine for 5 seconds.

The vehicle was successfully tracked during the flight from the ground stations of Sriharikota.

This was the first 'short duration experimental trial' of a Scramjet engine with hypersonic flight in the Make 6 and the advanced sounding rocket ATV carrying the engines weighed 3,277 kg.

In this flight, key technologies such as ignition of air-breathing engines at supersonic speeds, flame holding at supersonic speeds, air intake systems, and fuel injection systems have been successfully demonstrated.

The scramjet engine will eventually be used to drive ISRO's reusable launch vehicle at hypersonic speeds.

The ATV has similar solid motors (based on the Rohini RH 560 sounding rocket) as well as the second stage (booster and continuous).

Twin Scramjet engines were fitted behind the second stage. Once the second stage reached the desired conditions for 'engine start-up', the necessary action to ignite the scramjet engines was initiated and they worked for about five seconds, stating that Sunday's ATV flight operations. Was based on a pre-sorted sequence.

Two sounding rockets were used - one was tagged with the other for technology demonstration.

While one landed seven kilometers further down, the other had two scramjet engines on it, covering a distance of up to 20 kilometers.

The technology was in line with the Make in India theme of the central government.

While the Scramjet engine working duration was five seconds, at the beginning of the five-second period, fuel was injected and then the engine was ignited automatically.

"The fuel injection lasted seven seconds, the burns continued, the flame persisted and the result showed that what we wanted had happened."

The Scramjet engine had auto-ignition capability, ignition being added when the hot air is exposed to hydrogen. "It is a feature of today's performance."

Some of the most important aspects of the experimental mission:

● Air enters the combustion chamber at supersonic speed.

● At this speed, air continuously comes inside the chamber and at such a junction the ignition is required and the flame has to be maintained.

● "It is similar to illuminating a match during a cyclone," he said.

This was one aspect of the auto-ignition technology performance, he said, adding that the results showed that whatever we had planned was achieved, meaning that we now have (the tendency to breathe air) technology '.

Further, the required thrust level was achieved and on Sunday ISRO and India acquired a very important, complex technology useful for future space transport systems, either for launch vehicles or for aerospace aircraft. '

“Now using this technology, we need to design the actual vehicle. That is why we are cut out for us, ”he said.

However, a 'baby step' is a very important step for future technology in this regard and it will take years to fully develop the process.