Space Zone India Pvt Ltd, a startup that is building rockets, on Saturday launched its reusable, sounding rocket, RHUMI 1, from a mobile launch pad from the shore of the Bay of Bengal on Saturday morning.

The launch at the temple town of Tiruvadanthai, about 40 km from Chennai on the East Coast Road, saw the rocket lift off at around 7.30 am.

The rocket was completely unguided. RHUMI 1 (named after Megalingam’s son), standing 3.5 meters tall and was a single-piece rocket, weighing about 80 kg, after lift off just zipped towards the sky and vanished behind the clouds.

It was fuelled by a combination of waxes and uses nitrous oxide as the oxidiser (necessary for combustion), making it a ‘hybrid’ vehicle.

The rocket will soar with an initial thrust of 2,500 newtons. All but its nose cone is reusable — the nose cone will get thrown off once it releases the payload, but the rest of the rocket will descend on a parachute into the sea.

The rocket carried three Cube satellites designed to monitor and collect data on atmospheric conditions, including cosmic radiation intensity, UV radiation intensity, air quality, and more.

The rocket deployed 50 different Pico satellites, each dedicated to studying various aspects of atmospheric conditions such as vibration, accelerometer readings, altitude, ozone levels, toxic content, and natural and synthetic molecular bonding of fibers, enhancing our understanding of environmental dynamics.

The start-up was advised by former ISRO scientist, Dr Mylswamy Annadurai, who was involved in the Indian space agency’s Chandrayaan-1, Chandrayaan-2 and Mangalyaan missions.

Being a sounding rocket, it was completely unguided, which means it goes up to a certain height and falls.

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