Bengaluru: HAL’s new facilities to support ISRO’s LVM3 programme

Bengaluru: Hoping to upgrade capacity to meet ISRO’s growing production requirements, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) on Wednesday opened a manufacturing facility at its aerospace division here. The new propellant tank production and CNC machining facilities will exclusively cater to the production of India’s heaviest rocket, the Launch Vehicle Mark-3 (LVM3). While ISRO requires six LVM3 launches annually, the existing capacity allows only two per year. The new facilities will address this gap and enable HAL to manufacture critical components to support the production of six LVM3s per year, HAL said. ISRO Chairman S Somanath inaugurated the facilities.
The propellant tank production facility will specialise in manufacturing high-performance fuel and oxidiser tanks, critical components for the LVM3 with diameters up to 4 m and lengths of up to 15 m. The CNC machining facility has advanced computer numerical control machines to handle high-precision manufacturing of the launch vehicle’s 4.5 m-class ring and propellant tank dome. Somnath said that the immense potential of HAL needs to be explored in the larger interest of both the organisations. He said that this defence public sector company will play a big role in future missions of ISRO and hence it should focus on emerging technologies, designing challenges and end-to-end work to reduce pressure on ISRO.
HAL CMD (additional charge) C B Ananthakrishnan said that the ongoing collaboration with ISRO will accelerate the development of human space flight missions and next generation launch vehicles. There are significant opportunities to work with ISRO and HAL is committed to invest further to exploit the full potential in space programmes. He said that the day is not far when space will become an important work area of ​​HAL.