Andhra Pradesh: India on Sunday morning successfully tested its own scramjet or the air breathing engine with the launch of a big sounding rocket, said a senior official of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

“The mission was successful. Two scramjet engines were tested during the flight. The finer details about the test will be known later,” said an official. He said that as scheduled the two stage/engine RH-560 sounding rocket took off from the rocket port located at Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC) in Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh at 6 am.

He said the two air breathing engines were like hugging the rocket on its sides and normally when the rocket reaches a height of 11 km the scramjet engines would start breathing air. “The scramjet engines were ignited 55 seconds into the rocket’s flight. The engines were tested for six seconds,” he added.

The test was to have been done on July 28, 2016 but the search by the Indian Air Force and the Navy for the IAF’s transport aircraft An-32, which disappeared over the Bay of Bengal has delayed it by a month. The Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Thiruvananthapuram, has developed the engines to be used in a two-stage RH-560 rocket.

Named Advanced Technology Vehicle (ATV), the test platform comprises a scramjet engine hitched to the RH- 560 rocket. The scramjet engine, used only during the atmospheric phase of the rocket’s flight, will help in bringing down the launch cost by reducing the amount of oxidiser to be carried along with the fuel.