India among 6 countries with indigenous Cryogenic tech, ISRO’s CE20 engine now human-rated: ISRO

New Delhi: India is among six countries — the US, France, Russia, China, and Japan — that have indigenously developed Cryogenic technology, said Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman Dr. V. Narayanan on Monday.

Speaking at the launch of a research centre at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, Narayanan said that ISRO’s CE20 engine has achieved a human rating for the Gaganyaan mission.

“The Cryogenic Engine technology was denied to India but today, we have three different such engines with the third one being human-rated. Only six countries in the world have this technology,” Narayanan said, noting the world records made with the advanced technology.

“We have made three world records in this technology — we got it right in our third attempt; from the engine test to flight, we got it done in 28 months, while other countries took between 42 months and 18 years. We also conducted the test in 34 days which no other country had done as they took around 5 to 6 months,” the ISRO chief said.

Narayanan also urged IIT Madras to “aim for a couple of Nobel Prizes”.

Meanwhile, ISRO’s Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) in collaboration with SCL, Chandigarh has developed 32-bit microprocessors — VIKRAM3201 and KALPANA3201 — for space applications.

“VIKRAM3201 is the first fully “Make-in-India” 32-bit microprocessor that is qualified for use in the harsh environmental conditions of launch vehicles,” ISRO said.

The processor was fabricated at the 180nm CMOS semiconductor fab of SCL. It is an advanced version of the indigenously designed 16-bit VIKRAM1601 microprocessor which has been flying in the Avionics system of ISRO’s launch vehicles since 2009.

KALPANA3201 is a 32-bit SPARC V8 RISC microprocessor and is based on the IEEE 1754 Instruction Set Architecture.

“The microprocessor has been designed to be compatible with open-source software toolsets along with in-house developed simulator & IDE and has been tested with flight software,” ISRO said.

IANS