1 tonne to 700km SSO; 3m payload fairing diameter; 2 stage - 1st stage powered by single Kalam engine, and 2nd stage powered by single Aeon engine with multiple restart capability.
150KG to 700km SSO; 2m payload fairing diameter; 2 stage - 1st stage powered by 4xAeon engines and 2nd stage powered by single downrated Aeon engine with restart capability.
Garuda, for the first time, will feature a unique thermodynamic cycle for its first stage engine. This engine called Kalam, will feature combustion tap-off cycle, i.e. it uses a pump-fed engine design with a tap-off cycle to take small amount of combustion gases from main combustion chamber to power the engine turbopumps. This produces high impulse and is much simpler than pre-burning staged combustion because of its single combustion chamber and graceful shut down mode. This engine is designed to generate 800kN thrust in vacuum.
The Aeon engine will feature turbo-pumps driven by Brushless DC motors powered by advanced batteries. This will eliminate the need for complex turbo-machinery and highly complex plumbing. This engine is designed to generate 41kN thrust in vacuum.
"There is a photograph that shows splashdown inside the control room," says H. David Reed, a flight dynamics officer during Apollo 11. "There's a guy standing by the console with a huge piece of paper. That's me. I got the signatures of everybody in that room and in the back room. Every time I did that I would ask them their age. Well, I sat down and ran it out. The average age the night we had splashdown was 28." When Space Shuttle Atlantis left Earth on May 11, 2009, the average NASA civil servant's age was 47.
Blue Origin, with their New Shepard launch vehicle, has successfully flight-tested the BE-3 engine using a tap-off cycle. According to Blue Origin, the cycle is particularly suited to human spaceflight due to its simplicity, with only one combustion chamber and a less stressful engine shutdown process. However, engine startup is more complicated, and due to its nature of feeding gases from the main combustion chamber into the turbopumps, the turbine must be built to withstand higher-than-normal temperatures.[3]
Rohan HasabnisHey, I just wanted to ask if ISRO is going to use your electronic propulsion for satellite ?Also, when are you going to test your launch vehicles ? Please give us some updates.Like · Reply · December 25, 2016 at 12:37pmBellatrix AerospaceWe are working with ISRO. 2 more years to get the system space qualified. Prior to that, we are looking out for other small satellite developers to host our nano thruster as an experimental payload.As for as Chetak launcher is concerned, it's still in preliminary design phase and we're running simulations on its booster engine. ThanksLike · Reply · 1 · December 25, 2016 at 9:22pm
defence company working in the area of satellite propulsion systems, is in the process of raising $2 million, said a company official.“We are a boot-strapped company. We are expecting to raise $2 million within three months and have initiated talks with private equity and venture capital firms. The fund will be used for research and development and product development. It will last us 18-24 months,” said M.R. Gopinath, chief financial officer, Bellatrix Aerospace.
Space No BarIndia’s young space entrepreneurs are charting new paths in the sectorThe offices of Bellatrix Aerospace in Bengaluru may seem unassuming, especially when you are told that six young engineers here developed a water-powered, electric propulsion system for satellites. Indian Space Research Organisation has given the company a developmental order for this system. Bellatrix is also working with Hindusthan Institute of Technology, Coimbatore, to develop a micro-satellite that will be in orbit in the near future.CEO Rohan Ganapathy, 25, says it all began the day he met Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon, in the US in 2011: “I was still in college in Coimbatore, when I got an opportunity to attend a seminar organised by NASA. Aldrin told me that that there is huge scope in space exploration and technology, as a large part of space is still unexplored. Though I was always interested in space sciences, that day fixed my goal. I knew I had to do something unique in this field.”Ganapathy says his second wave of inspiration also came from the US. When private firm SpaceX built its own rockets, he felt it could be done in India, too. “I knew that space projects are long term, require immense dedication, patience and, more than anything else, huge funds,” he said. Among his earliest mentors he counts Sajjan Jindal, chairman, JSW Group, Dr P.S. Goel, former director, ISRO Satellite Centre, Bengaluru, and Dr Ugur Guven, a renowned aerospace and nuclear engineer....
Among this new crop of startups is Bellatrix Aerospace, which is building new-age satellite propulsion systems and launch vehicles. It has patented an electric propulsion system — the Microwave Electro-thermal Thruster (MET) — which it claims is more efficient than traditional chemical thrusters as it provides a higher ‘mileage’ and lasts longer.
“Predominantly, there are two kinds of electrical thrusters that have been traditionally researched and used — the gridded ion thruster and the Hall Effect thruster,” says Ganapathy.
Bellatrix has gone a different way with its thruster. “We have been working on a different kind of thruster called the Microwave Electro-thermal Thruster (MET), which is much more efficient than other electrical thrusters,” explains Ganapathy, about the novel satellite propulsion design. “The thrust generated by electric thrusters is very low, as little as pulling two sheets of paper. But since there is no friction in space, this is enough to move the satellite,” he adds.In addition, MET is designed to be a zero-erosion thruster, which gives it a longer lifespan. “Electric thrusters are usually prone to erosion. Every time they are fired, a small portion of the metal gets eroded. Our thruster does not erode, allowing it to last longer,” says Ganapathy.
Apart from the MET, the team is also working on other types of thrusters like the Hall Effect thruster, a nano-thruster for nano-satellites, and a green monopropellant thruster, a chemical propulsion system that is environmentally friendly.
Fabulous news from Bellatrix! I wonder if they've built this on their own, or as a consortium. Lifting 200+kg on their first mission, is not bad. Re-usability is certainly novel where India is concerned, and for most countries! Only two have made re-usable vehicles, I'm fairly certain! Also, from a private sector Indian company, very impressive.
Wonder if Bellatrix would be interested in isros new SSLV rocket? They could manufacture components and build up finances to get their other projects off the ground in the long term.
This June, Bellatrix announced that it had secured $3 million in pre-series A funding from a clutch of investors led by venture capital (VC) firm IDFC-Parampara, and including the Munjal Group and actor Deepika Padukone’s KA Enterprises. One of the reasons investors found Bellatrix attractive was because it’s the only venture in India to have a development contract from Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) for its microwave plasma thruster, says Jatin Desai, general partner at Parampara Capital.
Bengaluru: Space technology startup Bellatrix Aerospace has successfully tested India’s first privately developed hall-effect thruster, an electric propulsion engine for micro satellites weighing 50-500 kg.The thruster will be ready for commercial use by the end of this year, the company said.Bellatrix said it has completed ground tests for the new thruster in line with Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and European Space Agency (ESA) standards at its lab at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.It is now readying to test its hall-effect thruster in space, for which it has signed an agreement with a European company for the device to be fitted to a satellite which will be launched in the coming months.“We have optimised this propulsion system to specifically cater to the microsatellite segment. There were a lot of challenges in scaling down the technology, both in the plasma physics and the thruster construction,” said Rohan M Ganapathy, co-founder and chief executive officer at Bellatrix Aerospace. “It has taken us more than four years to develop this from scratch.”Hall-effect thrusters were first developed by the erstwhile Soviet Union in the 1970s. While they’ve become a mainstay for satellite propulsion over the years, the technology has traditionally been used only for large satellites weighing in excess of 2,000 kg.Bellatrix said its new thruster will provide a reliable propulsion solution to small satellite manufacturers, a market which is seen as booming after players like Starlink, OneWeb and even Amazon have gotten into a race to create a web of satellites that can beam broadband internet down to earth.
Bellatrix Aerospace, which became the first private Indian company to develop and test a hall-effect thruster (a type of electric propulsion system), said late on Thursday evening that the partnership with L&T will allow it to work closely with them for “building great products for the world”.“We are confident that this unique collaboration combining L&T's proven capabilities in catering to Indian space programs with our strengths in advanced propulsion and allied technologies can help enable cost-effective and sustainable access to space,” Bellatrix said, without divulging any further details.
A person in the know of the matter told ET that the partnership with Bellatrix was not just to leverage space-grade manufacturing capabilities that L&T has built up over the last few decades, but was towards the joint development of products and manufacturing to service demand for private space access.“The partnership is more geared towards joint development and manufacturing of some new products together, which is a unique combination of a startup partnering with a large firm after the new space laws have come in,” said the person, requesting anonymity as the details of the deal are not yet public.
Bellatrix also has partnerships with Skyroot Aerospace, which is building affordable small satellite launch vehicles for its orbital transfer vehicle. It had signed a third MoU with space-based earth-observation company SatSure for providing its propulsion systems for its small satellites that will be launched into lower-earth orbit sometime in December 2022.Bellatrix is also the world’s first firm to develop a Microwave Plasma Thruster that uses only water as a fuel for which it has bagged an order from Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The company has also done a lot of work on developing alternative fuels for rockets at its propulsion lab setup at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru.
Bellatrix tests India’s 1st high-performance green propulsion for satellitesBENGALURU: In a significant milestone, space transportation company Bellatrix Aerospace has successfully tested India’s first high-performance green propulsion system for satellites, a greener alternative to conventional hydrazine-based satellite propulsion systems.The firm developed a “proprietary high performance green monopropellant” with the guidance from Charlie Oommen, professor, department of aerospace engineering at IISc. The test comes at a time various governments are considering banning hydrazine due to its toxic impact.
Elaborating on the test done in a vacuum environment, Saagar Malaichamy, co-founder and senior scientist at the firm’s mono propellant systems division, said “These tests validate functioning of many critical areas such as high temperature metallurgy, catalysis and energetic materials. We’ve performed multiple consecutive tests and the results are fairly consistent. We are currently working towards optimising parameters to meet stringent requirements for acceptance in spaceflight.”Saagar added that the product under testing is a 1N thruster suitable for use in micro/small satellites weighing between 50kg to 1,000kg and supports agile manoeuvres in space. “We’re also developing larger thrusters that could propel heavy satellites,” he said.
The major combustion byproducts of the new Bellatrix thruster are water vapour based, making it green and environment friendly and its unique properties make it suitable for deep space missions with long coasting requirements.
In-space propulsion startup Bellatrix seals $8 million funding roundChennai: Bengaluru-based in-space propulsion startup Bellatrix Aerospace has concluded a $8 million funding round led by BASF Venture Capital GmbH, the corporate venture company of BASF SE, and early-stage VC Inflexor Ventures.