Overview
- On Friday Astrobase showed EVEREST, an India‑designed and manufactured full‑flow staged combustion engine that uses liquid oxygen and methane and is rated at about 800 kilonewtons of thrust.
- Full‑flow staged combustion routes all propellant through separate fuel‑rich and oxidiser‑rich preburners to drive turbopumps and then into the main chamber, a complex design that can raise efficiency, chamber pressure and reusability potential.
- EVEREST has completed subscale firings and turbopump tests but has not yet undergone its first full‑scale hot‑fire, which the company says will take place at its 21.5‑acre Anantapur test facility in the coming months.
- Astrobase says it has built design and assembly facilities in Bengaluru, is using large metal 3D printing for parts, plans roughly 20 engine tests before an initial orbital attempt and has sought to scale manufacturing to support future launch cadence.
- The programme is supported by IN‑SPACe’s Technology Adoption Fund, places India among a small set of teams pursuing FFSC technology, and still faces key hurdles—full‑engine qualification, vehicle integration and demonstrated stage recovery—before the late‑2020s orbital goal can be validated.