ISRO test-fires student-made rocket

 Engineering students at VIT University, Vellore, in Tamil Nadu, had developed Rohini-200 (RH-200) series sounding rocket, which was launched from Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station (TERLS) Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, near Thiruvananthapuram on Wednesday.

A sounding rocket is a research vehicle that does not put a satellite into orbit. Its main objective is to take measurements and do atmospheric experiments during its short, sub-orbital flight.

It is the 50-seconds sounding rocket from TERLS. It was mostly designed and tested at the VSSC facility, but developed by students, Ratnakar Rao, Project Director (Sounding Rocket), VSSC said.

The VIT University had funded the project in which engineering students, Dev Sharma, Sunayan Kumar, Himanshu Misra, Chandresh Mittal, Ankit Sharma, Manish Kumar Narnoli, Nitesh Kumar and Gautam Alok developed the payload. The team of students mentored by Professor Geetha Manivasagam, fabricated the payload and other components.

The students also developed a 3-axis accelerometer with signal conditioned voltage output with the capability of measuring dynamic acceleration from motion, shock, or vibration.