Agnikul Cosmos Opens Two New Facilities to Test Reusable Rocket Stages

Indian space-tech company Agnikul Cosmos has inaugurated two new facilities at its Assembly Testing Facility in Chennai to expand its in-house capabilities for building reusable rockets. The Stage Testing Inspection Facility (STIF) and the Pressurant Tank Realisation, Over-wrapping and Outfitting Facility (PROOF) were opened in the presence of Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, the Gaganyaan astronaut.

STIF, designed and built in-house, can test complete rocket stages under flight-like conditions, with propulsion and avionics integrated, including clusters of Agnikul's patented single-piece, semi-cryogenic, electric pump-fed 3D-printed engines. It supports thrust levels from 1 kilonewton to 200 kilonewtons, cools liquid oxygen down to 73 Kelvin, and can run full-duration burns of up to 150 seconds. The facility also lets engineers inspect and requalify stages after they have flown and been recovered, supporting a cycle of building, testing, flying, recovering, inspecting, requalifying and flying stages again.

PROOF brings the manufacturing of high-pressure composite overwrapped pressure vessels in-house, producing more than 10 vessels a month with capacities of up to 3,500 litres and pressure ratings of up to 350 bar. Agnikul says the facility will improve manufacturing control, cut external dependencies and speed up production and design changes. "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 of Agnikul Cosmos.

Agnikul already designs and manufactures its single-piece 3D-printed semi-cryogenic engines in-house, along with its avionics and other propulsion and vehicle systems. Its Mission-01, launched on 30 May 2024, demonstrated a controlled ascent using the single-piece 3D-printed engine and an in-house autopilot architecture.