AlphaRocketry

The Indian space agency is literally growing new wings as it gets ready to test a scaled down version of what can easily be described as the `swadeshi Space Shuttle'. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) calls it the `Reusable Launch Vehicle' or RLV. If all goes to plan very soon it will be seen flying over the Science City in Challakere, Karnataka, where the first landing experiment is being planned. S Somanath, Chairman, ISRO says "We are working silently on reusable rocket technology, with a very low budget, low cost and low investment." In the past USA and Russia have flown full-fledged winged space vehicles. Russia/USSR flew its vehicle called `Buran' only once in 1988 and the program was then shelved. USA made 135 flights of the Space Shuttle and in 2011 it was retired. Since then in a new burst of energy, USA, China and India are the only countries having an active program of re-useable rocket development. If all goes as per plan India's full...

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has destroyed a "large" part of its own space history, with reports now confirming the fate of an enormous aircraft that was originally built to transport Soviet space shuttles. Once the world's largest flying machine by both wingspan and weight, the Antonov An-225 "Mriya" ("Dream") was parked in an open-air hangar undergoing repairs at Hostomel (or Gostomel) airport, located to the northwest of Ukraine's capital city of Kyiv, when Russia launched its attack against the country on Thursday (Feb. 24). Four days later, the news came that the one-of-a-kind aircraft was no more. "The biggest plane in the world, "Mriya" (The Dream), was destroyed by Russian occupants on an airfield near Kiev," the official Twitter account for the country of Ukraine reported on Sunday. The Antonov Company, which since 2001 has operated the AN-225 as a heavy-lift cargo freighter, also took to Twitter to say it ...