RSP Supplies 30.5 Tonne Special Steel for ISRO’s ‘Gaganayan’ Project

Bhubaneswar: Bringing laurels, the Rourkela Steel Plant (RSP) has supplied 30.5 tonne of maraging steel that are to be used in the ‘Gaganayan project, the first indigenous manned mission of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to space, RSP statement said.

Gautam Banerjee, Executive Director (Works) of RSP, flagged off the plates in a function organised at Plate Mill department on Saturday.

The plates rolled from 14 slabs were the first lot of the total order quantity, the RSP statement said.

Maraging steel is a special quality steel containing nickel, cobalt, molybdenum, titanium and aluminium and is manufactured through vacuum melting process. Rolling of maraging steel requires very stringent process parameters, it said.

Generally any steel with higher strength will have low ductility and vice versa. But the significance of maraging steel is that it has got very high strength (to the tune of 5-6 times of mild steel) along with good ductility.

Maraging steel is being used for the launch vehicle rocket motor casing and for other different defence applications. These maraging steel plates rolled in RSP were also used in the recently launched Chandrayan-II, it said.