Bengaluru space-tech firm The Guild unveils 150-acre rocket testing facility near Sriharikota

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A view of The Guild's rocket development and testing facility set up in Tirupati district BY ARRANGEMENT | Photo Credit: BY ARRANGEMENT

Ethereal Exploration Guild (The Guild), a Bengaluru-based private space technology company, on Friday unveiled The Anchorage, a 150-acre rocket development and testing facility in Space City, about 40 km from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre (SDSC-SHAR) at Sriharikota in Tirupati district.

The facility will provide ground infrastructure for the development and testing of Razor Crest Mk 1 (RCM1), the company’s fully reusable medium-lift launch vehicle, according to a press release issued by the company.

The RCM1 is being designed for the recovery and reuse of both its booster and upper stage. Its propulsion architecture comprises two semi-cryogenic rocket engines: Pegasus, an 80 kN upper-stage engine designed to power the reusable upper stage, and Stallion, a 1.2 MN gas-generator booster engine intended for lift-off and atmospheric ascent.

Pegasus incorporates the company’s Full-Flow Segregated Cooling Cycle (FSCC) and a dual-thrust-chamber architecture. The Guild said the technology had been developed entirely in-house and described it as a new rocket engine feed cycle specifically designed for upper-stage reusability, a first in the history of rocketry.

“The Anchorage represents a long-term investment in the capacity development required to test, manufacture and repeatedly operate Razor Crest Mk-1,” said Manu J. Nair, co-founder and chief executive officer of The Guild.

He said full reusability could not be achieved through vehicle design alone, but required an integrated industrial ecosystem in which manufacturing, qualification and refurbishment were engineered to work together throughout the vehicle’s operational life. The company is building this foundation alongside the development of its engines and rocket stages, he added.

The facility is being developed to support successive stages of testing and qualification, from individual engine components to integrated propulsion systems and complete rocket stages.

The Guild’s co-founder, Prashanth Sharma, said engine testing establishes propulsion performance, while stage qualification determines how the propulsion system functions alongside tanks, feed systems, structures, avionics and controls.

“The Anchorage was being developed around that progression, from Pegasus component testing and integrated firing to Stallion engine clusters and complete stages,” he said.

This approach, Mr. Sharma said, would generate test data to inform design decisions and support hardware qualification, helping the company advance the development of its reusable launch vehicle.

science and technology / manufacturing and engineering / rocketry / space programme

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