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BANGALORE: India's ambitions of developing a hypersonic vehicle which will launch an unmanned cruise missile are being realized in Bangalore. The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) will play a key role in simulating the speeds and conducting tests in its newly commissioned hypersonic wind tunnel.
B Vasudevan, head, Hypersonic Wind Tunnel, said: "This can test any object that will fly in space. The funding for the project came from the Defence Research and Development Laboratory, Hyderabad."
The 0.5 metre tunnel, which was commissioned on Tuesday, is the second largest facility in the country; the largest is at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre of Isro in Thiruvananthapuram.
Vasudevan said the first project at the facility will be the testing of the Hypersonic Technology Demonstration Vehicle. "We have tested seven of these vehicle models and this will be the eighth. The development is likely to be completed in two years," he added.
A senior DRDO official told TOI the HSTDV has achieved the 6.5 Mach (a measure of speed). It, he said, would give India a lead in hypersonic vehicle design, scramjet, material technology and how to manage the environment peculiar to hypersonic flying engines.
He also pointed out that the tunnel cost about Rs 6 crore and similar facilities abroad have been constructed at costs of over hundreds of crores of rupees.
"This facility will save the country a lot of money as we're charging only about Rs 2 crore for tests which would cost Rs 15 or Rs 20 crore in Russia or some other countries," he said.
Explaining the HSTDV project, he said: "It will be the equivalent of Nasa's X43 and a huge achievement for our scientists once it's ready for use by the armed forces."
IISc will also conduct tests on the next version of the BrahMos missile. A senior official of BrahMos Aerospace, who was at IISc on Tuesday, said: "We're moving ahead on supersonic now. The next version of BrahMos will be hypersonic and we're looking at good results."
Isro's re-entry vehicle prototype and some new missile projects in the pipeline which IISc cannot discuss under a non-disclosure agreement are the immediate projects for this wind tunnel.
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