The Guild Unveils 150-Acre Rocket Testing Facility Near Sriharikota
Ethereal Exploration Guild unveiled a 150-acre facility near Sriharikota to develop and test its fully reusable RCM1 medium-lift launch vehicle.
Bengaluru-based space technology company Ethereal Exploration Guild (The Guild) on Friday unveiled a 150-acre rocket development and testing facility, The Anchorage, at Space City, about 40 km from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC-SHAR) at Sriharikota in Tirupati district. The facility will provide the ground infrastructure required to develop and test Razor Crest Mk 1 (RCM1), the company's fully reusable medium-lift launch vehicle, according to a company press release.
The rocket is being designed to recover and reuse both its booster and upper stage. Its propulsion system will use two semi-cryogenic engines: Pegasus, an 80-kilonewton engine for the reusable upper stage, and Stallion, a 1.2-meganewton gas-generator engine designed to power lift-off and atmospheric ascent.
Pegasus features the company's what is technically called ‘full-flow segregated cooling cycle (FSCC)’ and a ‘dual-thrust-chamber configuration’. The Guild said the technology had been developed in-house and described the engine feed cycle as a first-of-its-kind innovation specifically designed to enable upper-stage reusability.
Company co-founder and CEO Manu J. Nair, said The Anchorage represented a long-term investment in the infrastructure needed to test, manufacture and repeatedly operate the RCM1.
He stressed that achieving full reusability required more than vehicle design, calling for an integrated industrial ecosystem that combined manufacturing, qualification and refurbishment throughout the rocket's operational life. The company is developing this infrastructure alongside its engines and rocket stages.
The facility will support testing and qualification at multiple levels, beginning with individual engine components and progressing to integrated propulsion systems and complete rocket stages.
Co-founder Prashanth Sharma said engine testing established propulsion performance, while stage qualification assessed how the propulsion system worked with tanks, feed systems, structures, avionics and controls. The facility would support a phased testing programme, covering Pegasus component tests and integrated firings, followed by Stallion engine clusters and complete stages, he said.
