Agnikul Cosmos has inaugurated two new units at its Assembly & Testing Facility in Chennai, expanding its capabilities to test reusable rocket stages under flight-like conditions and manufacture critical launch vehicle components in-house. The facilities – the Stage Testing & Inspection Facility (STIF) and the Pressurant Tank Realization, Over-wrapping and Outfitting Facility (PROOF), were inaugurated in the presence of Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, Gaganyaan astronaut.
This positions Agnikul among a small set of global companies working towards full-stack reusable launch capability – and the only Indian private space company with in-house post-flight requalification infrastructure.
The Stage Testing & Inspection Facility (STIF) is a fully in-house designed and fabricated facility for testing reusable rocket stages under flight-like operating conditions. It enables full-stage testing with propulsion and avionics integrated, including clusters of Agnikul’s patented, single-piece, semi-cryogenic, electric pump-fed 3D-printed engines. STIF supports thrust levels from 1 kN to 200 kN, LOX sub-cooling down to 73 K and full-duration burns of up to 150 seconds. Critically, the facility also supports post-flight inspection and requalification of recovered stages. STIF provides the infrastructure to develop a repeatable build, test, fly, recover, inspect, requalify and fly-again cycle for reusable launch vehicles – an essential capability for building a truly reusable launch system.
PROOF brings the manufacture of high-pressure composite overwrapped pressure vessels in-house. It can produce more than 10 vessels a month, including vessels of up to 3,500 litres and 350 bar. By bringing vessel manufacturing in-house, Agnikul gains greater control over the complete manufacturing process, while reducing external dependencies and enabling faster iteration and production turnaround. Together, the facilities expand Agnikul’s vertically integrated launch vehicle capabilities, from propulsion and avionics development to component manufacturing, stage testing and recovery operations.
“India’s space programme is entering an exciting phase, with capabilities being built across the country that will enable increasingly ambitious missions. It is encouraging to see Agnikul continue to expand its capabilities in advanced manufacturing and testing. The emergence of such capabilities across the industry will play an important role in building a deeper and more self-reliant space ecosystem for India” said Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla
“The vision of bringing reusability to launch requires us to think beyond a single flight and build the capability to test, recover, inspect and prepare a stage for its next flight. 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. PROOF takes us another step towards end-to-end in-house quality control. Having Group Captain Shukla, who has flown to space, inaugurate these facilities is a dream come true for all of us at Agnikul,” said Srinath Ravichandran, Co-founder and CEO, Agnikul Cosmos.
“STIF and PROOF bring critical capabilities for our vehicle recovery and manufacturing operations in-house. The ability to manufacture high-pressure composite overwrapped vessels at production scale gives us greater control over the process, quality and turnaround time. This capability, along with the stage-level testing facility, will be important as we expand our manufacturing capacity and build towards a higher launch cadence,” said Moin SPM, Co-founder and COO, Agnikul Cosmos.
The new facilities add to Agnikul’s growing in-house manufacturing, testing and launch infrastructure. The company already designs and manufactures its single-piece, 3D-printed semi-cryogenic engines in-house, alongside developing its avionics and other propulsion and vehicle systems.
Agnikul’s Mission-01, launched on 30 May 2024, successfully demonstrated a controlled ascent using its single-piece 3D-printed engine and in-house autopilot architecture.
With STIF and PROOF, Agnikul is extending this in-house approach from individual propulsion and vehicle components to stage testing, recovery assessment and critical composite overwrapped vessel manufacturing.