Fiscal Federalism in India: Bridging North-South Gaps

General Studies Paper -2

Context: Recent Lok Sabha verdict has brought back regional parties from Andhra Pradesh and Bihar to pole positions in the country’s governance looking for strengthening the federal polity and making decision-making more democratic.

ISRO’s Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) Programme

• Recently, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) informed that it is all set to carry out the third and final RLV Landing Experiment (RLV LEX) under the Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) Programme.

About the Reusable Launch Vehicle Landing Experiment (RLV LEX) of ISRO

• RLV-LEX missions involve taking an unmanned winged prototype, christened Pushpak, to a designated height and releasing it to land safely under varying conditions.
• The configuration of RLV-TD is similar to that of an aircraft and combines the complexity of both launch vehicles and aircraft.
• The winged RLV-TD has been configured to act as a flying test bed to evaluate various technologies, namely, hypersonic flight, autonomous landing, and powered cruise flight.
• In the future, this vehicle aims to be scaled up to become the first stage of India’s reusable two-stage orbital launch vehicle.

Significance of the Experiment

• It marked a significant milestone in ISRO’s journey towards achieving low-cost access to space. The successful execution of the landing experiment demonstrated ISRO’s capability to develop a reusable launch vehicle, which is expected to significantly reduce the cost of launching satellites into orbit.
• The RLV-TD programme is a testament to ISRO’s commitment to innovation and technological advancement. With the successful completion of this landing experiment, ISRO has moved one step closer to realising its vision of developing a fully reusable launch vehicle.
• After the successful completion of the RLV-LEX series, ISRO plans to proceed with the next stage of tests under the RLV-TD Programme, involving an unmanned Orbital Re-entry Vehicle (ORV) that is 1.6 times the size of ‘Pushpak’ used in the LEX missions.
  • The ORV will be placed in a 400-kilometre orbit around Earth using a modified Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV)