Bengaluru: In a boost to India’s space technology, startups Bellatrix Aerospace and Dhruva Space have inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Larsen & Toubro Ltd. (L&T).
Bellatrix Aerospace became the first private Indian company to develop and test a hall-effect thruster (a sort of electrical propulsion system), said the partnership with L&T will permit it to work carefully with them for “building great products for the world”.
“We are confident that this unique collaboration combining L&T’s proven capabilities in catering to Indian space programs with our strengths in advanced propulsion and allied technologies can help enable cost-effective and sustainable access to space,” Bellatrix said without spelling out details. The agreements were signed on the sidelines of the Expo 2020 in Dubai on October 21.
“The partnership is more geared towards joint development and manufacturing of some new products together, which is a unique combination of a startup partnering with a large firm after the new space laws have come in,” sources said.
While Bellatrix has developed distinctive thrusters for space vehicles and satellites, Dhruva is a developer of satellites and launch platforms. Bellatrix and Dhruva have additionally signed an MoU for space qualification of its thrusters and likewise development of a “space taxi” for hurling a number of satellites into orbit on a single launch vehicle.
Bellatrix also has partnerships with Skyroot Aerospace, which is building affordable small satellite launch vehicles for its orbital switch car. It had signed a third MoU with space-based earth-observation firm SatSure for offering its propulsion techniques for its small satellites that might be launched into lower-earth orbit sometime in December 2022.
Bellatrix is the world’s first company to develop a Microwave Plasma Thruster that makes use of solely water as a gasoline for which it has bagged an order from Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). The firm has additionally performed numerous work on growing different fuels for rockets at its propulsion lab setup on the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru.
