Welcome Home SRE-1..

Following up with my previous blog entry. About Space capsule Recovery Experiment (SRE) module, which was launched by ISRO 11 days back.

Today SRE-1 is returned home.. in excellent condition.. Hurray !!

When SRE-1 was directed for re-entry, it was traveling with lightening speed. According to ISRO press release, "The capsule made its re-entry at 09:37 am at an altitude of 100 km with a velocity of 8 km/sec (29,000 km per hour)". "By the time SRE-1 descended to an altitude of 5 km, aerodynamic breaking had considerably reduced its velocity to 101 m/sec (363 km per hour). Pilot and drogue parachute deployments helped in further reducing its velocity to 47 m/sec (about 170 km per hour). The main parachute was deployed at about 2 km altitude and finally, SRE-1 splashed down in the Bay of Bengal with a velocity of 12 m/sec (about 43 km per hour) at 09:46 am."

I believe it takes hell lot of design efforts to build a re-entry capsule that can sustain against the warp speed and intense heat being generated because of earth's atmosphere... In fact just out of curiosity, I looked into the numbers for Apollo 11 mission space capsule, called "Columbia" which carried 3 astronauts. According to NASA, "Columbia entered the atmosphere at a speed of 40,000 kilometers per hour (25,000 miles per hour), its exterior reached a temperature of 2,760° C (5,000° F)."

.. Hshhh... Unbelievable.. Those astronauts survived at these extreme conditions..

.. Hats off to Apollo mission !!

Lets see how ISRO plans for their first manned lunar mission in 2018 !!