India’s First Hypervelocity Expansion Tunnel Test Facility:
The Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT-K) has successfully established and tested India’s first Hypervelocity Expansion Tunnel Test Facility recently.
- The S2, nicknamed ‘Jigarthanda’, is a 24-metre-long facility located at IIT Kanpur’s Hypersonic Experimental Aerodynamics Laboratory (HEAL) within the Department of Aerospace Engineering.
- It is India’s first Hypervelocity Expansion Tunnel Test Facility.
- It was indigenously designed and developed over three years with funding and support from the Aeronautical Research and Development Board (ARDB), the Department of Science and Technology (DST), and IIT Kanpur.
- It is capable of generating flight speeds between 3-10 km/s, simulating the hypersonic conditions encountered during the atmospheric entry of vehicles, asteroid entry, scramjet flights, and ballistic missiles.
- It will be a critical asset for the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
- It will serve as a testing ground for ongoing missions of ISRO and DRDO like Gaganyaan, Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLV), and hypersonic cruise missiles, enabling the development of more advanced and reliable aerospace technologies.
