The test-flight of the indigenously-developed supersonic combustion ramjet engine took place from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota at 6 a.m.

ISRO on Sunday successfully test-fired a newly-developed Scramjet Rocket Engine, DDNews reported. The Advanced Technology Vehicle (ATV), a sounding rocket (research rocket) with a solid booster carrying advanced scramjet engines, was successfully flight-tested from the launch pad of the Sathish Dhawan Space Centre, also known as Sriharikota Range (SHAR), at Sriharikota on Sunday. The space agency said with this flight, critical technologies such as ignition of air breathing engines at supersonic speed, holding the flame at supersonic speed, air intake mechanism and fuel injection systems have been successfully demonstrated. As a result, the amount of oxygen required to be carried on board would be reduced considerably as atmospheric oxygen is utilised to burn the fuel in the first stage. While conventional rocket engines need to carry both fuel and oxidiser on board for combustion to produce thrust, scramjet engines obtain oxygen from the atmosphere by compressing the incoming air before combustion at hypersonic speed. But as in the case of the successful test flight of a reusable vehicle, the first experimental flight using a scramjet engine is a technological demonstration of ISRO’s capability and will go a long way in redefining its position as one of the leading space agencies in the world. Once the second stage reached the desired conditions for engine “Start-up”, necessary actions were initiated to ignite the Scramjet engines and they functioned for about 5 seconds, it said adding that today’s ATV flight operations were based on a pre-programmed sequence.
The Indian Space agency ISRO successfully tests its Scramjet engines. Two scramjet engines were mounted alongside of a two-stage, solid fueled rocket called Advanced Technology Vehicle (ATV), which is an advanced sounding rocket. Scramjet engines were then ignited when ATV achieved a speed of Mach 6 (7350 km/hr) at an altitude of 20 km.