ISRO has commissioned a new Landing Gear Drop Test Facility at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, to support the development of landing systems for the winged body Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) named Pushpak. The facility will be used for the testing and qualification of deployable landing gear systems intended for the RLV-Orbital Re-entry Experiment (RLV-OREX), a mission in which the Pushpak vehicle is expected to re-enter the atmosphere and perform a runway landing after orbiting Earth.
The test rig supports simulation of landing velocities up to 360 km/hr (100 m/s) and wheel spin speeds of up to 5000 rpm. It can accommodate drop masses of up to 2000 kg and simulate landing sink rates up to 4.8 m/s. The system also allows testing under various simulated runway conditions, including asphalt, concrete, and wet or icy surfaces.
The facility includes equipment to evaluate different types of landing gear such as telescopic, articulated, and semi-articulated models. It is equipped with a sensor suite that includes accelerometers, high-resolution displacement sensors like LVDTs and LiDARs, tri-axial load cells, and strain gauges to measure acceleration, displacement, landing forces, and structural loads at the moment of touchdown.
Safety mechanisms integrated into the setup include a platform impact protector and a self-locking actuator for the drop mechanism. The facility was inaugurated on April 4, 2025, in the presence of ISRO Chairman V. Narayanan, VSSC Director Unnikrishnan Nair, SDSC-SHAR Director Rajarajan, and IISU Director Padmakumar.