DroneAcharya Marks Spacetech Foray, Tests Reusable Rocket Launch Vehicle

Close on the heels of Chandrayaan-3’s historic landing on the Moon, drone manufacturer DroneAcharya on Wednesday (August 23) also announced its foray into the spacetech industry.

In a press statement, the company said it successfully tested a reusable rocket launch vehicle, which attained an ‘altitude of 3 kms over the ground surface’. 

Speaking with Inc42, DroneAcharya’s founder and managing director Prateek Srivastava said that the launch was conducted on August 21 at a foreign location. The results of the flight were evaluated by the company in the wee hours of August 23. 

“This spacetech initiative by DroneAcharya directly compliments our existing drone tech solutions as the former correlates with the macro solutions of overall climatic studies while the latter deals with drone-based Imagery and on-ground situational studies,” said Srivastava.

Equipped within the launch vehicle were an air pressure sensor, a heat sensor, an internal combustion sensor, an air friction sensor, and a miniature parachute for onboard equipment recovery. The company claimed that it successfully landed the vehicle with the help of a parachute and was able to recover all vital sensors and equipment. 

As per the company, the objective of the test was to determine the burn rate of the solid propellant fuel between attaining an altitude of 3 kms and returning to the ground in ‘operational condition’.

Srivastava also told Inc42 that the company has been experimenting with the project for the past three months and ran simulations and trials before the test launch. He added that the company took help from a couple of ISRO employees, who helped formulate the test launch. 

The space launch vehicle, as per the founder, is 3 ft to 3.5 ft tall and uses a solid-fuel propellant with different sensors in its cavity. Going forward, DroneAcharya plans to increase the altitude to 10 kms and payload by 3X to collect atmospheric and meteorological data. It is eyeing the nano/ micro category of reusable rocket launch vehicles. 

This could enable the company to tap into wider applications including suborbital testing, aerodynamic designs, as well as aerospace system and parabolic testing. DroneAcharya is also looking to find use cases for the product to leverage data for climate and environmental studies.

“Our aim is CubeSats and NanoSats and we would like to have our own constellation for civilian, aircraft and defence purposes,” Srivastava said. 

The company wants to build a constellation of satellites high up in the sky and is targeting the B2C and B2G segments. 

Elaborating on a use case, he said that the vehicle could find usage in the meteorological department which has to send a balloon every day (along with sensors) in the sky to measure atmospheric parameters. Srivastava says that he wants to change this with a reusable launch vehicle, which can safely land on the ground with all sensors intact. 

The company claims that the launch vehicle was completely made from scratch in India and was ‘not expensive’ as against common perception. “Everything was made in India be it the body, the cylinder or the sensors. Even coding was done in Pune to ensure it was entirely a Made In India product,” Srivastava said. 

Lately, DroneAcharya has been scaling up its drone operations. In May, Srivastava said that the IPO helped the company secure ‘expansion funding’, allowing it to ‘think more audaciously when the opportunities present themselves’.

Founded by Srivastava in 2017, DroneAcharya offers an array of drone solutions and training programmes to its customers. 

The drone manufacturer continues to post healthy numbers. The Pune-based startup’s profits jumped 742% year-on-year (YoY) to INR 3.42 Cr in the financial year 2022-23 (FY23) against an operating revenue of INR 18.57 Cr.

Shares of DroneAcharya closed 1.91% down at INR 156.40 on the BSE SME platform on Wednesday (August 23).