Kerala Hitech Industries Limited (KELTEC) was an Indian aerospace company in

Thiruvananthapuram Thiruvananthapuram (; ), also known by its former name Trivandrum (), is the capital of the Indian state of Kerala. It is the most populous city in Kerala with a population of 957,730 as of 2011. The encompassing urban agglomeration populati ...

Kerala Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South ...

. Its product-mix included systems required for the

launch vehicle A launch vehicle or carrier rocket is a rocket designed to carry a payload (spacecraft or satellites) from the Earth's surface to outer space. Most launch vehicles operate from a launch pad, launch pads, supported by a missile launch contro ...

satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioisotope ...

and non-rotating systems of turbojet aircraft engines. KELTEC was acquired by

BrahMos Aerospace The BrahMos Aerospace is an Indo-Russian multinational aerospace and defense corporation, with core manufacturing concentrations in Cruise missiles. Headquartered in New Delhi, India, it was founded as a joint venture between the India's Def ...

and rebranded as Brahmos Aerospace Trivandrum Ltd (BATL) in 2007.

Manufacturing facility

The Manufacturing facility is set up in a campus in

in the State of

adjacent to the

Trivandrum International Airport Thiruvananthapuram International Airport , is an international airport which serves Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of Kerala, India. Established in 1932, it is the first airport in the state of Kerala and fifth international airport of In ...

. The built-up area is about 10,000 sq.meters and the manpower is 300. KELTEC is a single stop work centre with multidisciplinary capability such as Conventional and CNC Machining,

Metal Forming Forming, metal forming, is the metalworking process of fashioning metal parts and objects through mechanical deformation; the workpiece is reshaped without adding or removing material, and its mass remains unchanged. Forming operates on the mater ...

, Auto TIG and Electron Beam Welding, Vacuum Brazing,

Heat Treatment Heat treating (or heat treatment) is a group of industrial, thermal and metalworking processes used to alter the physical, and sometimes chemical, properties of a material. The most common application is metallurgical. Heat treatments are also ...

, Surface Treatment etc. State-of-the-art systems for Quality Control and Metrology support the above manufacturing facilities. KELTEC can also undertake design and development of

aerospace Aerospace is a term used to collectively refer to the atmosphere and outer space. Aerospace activity is very diverse, with a multitude of commercial, industrial and military applications. Aerospace engineering consists of aeronautics and astrona ...

components, development of special processes like vacuum brazing of

aluminium Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. I ...

components, design and realisation of tools and fixtures required for production. KELTEC manufactures a number of major systems for the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), including Inertial Control Systems; Control System Components; High Pressure

Titanium Titanium is a chemical element with the symbol Ti and atomic number 22. Found in nature only as an oxide, it can be reduced to produce a lustrous transition metal with a silver color, low density, and high strength, resistant to corrosion in ...

Gas Bottles;

Fuel A fuel is any material that can be made to react with other substances so that it releases energy as thermal energy or to be used for work. The concept was originally applied solely to those materials capable of releasing chemical energy but ...

/ Oxidizer Tankages & Feed Line Systems, Liquid Propulsion Engine, Convergent Divergent Nozzles; and

Launch Vehicle A launch vehicle or carrier rocket is a rocket designed to carry a payload (spacecraft or satellites) from the Earth's surface to outer space. Most launch vehicles operate from a launch pad, launch pads, supported by a missile launch contro ...

Solid Rocket Motor Cases. The

Vikas engine The Vikas (a portmanteau from initials of ''VIK''ram ''A''mbalal ''S''arabhai ) is a family of liquid fuelled rocket engines conceptualized and designed by the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre in the 1970s. The design was based on the licensed ...

is a

Liquid Propellant Rocket A liquid-propellant rocket or liquid rocket utilizes a rocket engine that uses liquid propellants. Liquids are desirable because they have a reasonably high density and high specific impulse (''I''sp). This allows the volume of the propellant ta ...

engine which is used in the second stage of the

Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) is an expendable medium-lift launch vehicle designed and operated by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). It was developed to allow India to launch its Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) satellites ...

(PSLV) and the second stage and strap-on stages of the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV). The entire Engine which comprises more than 500 machined and welded components is manufactured at KELTEC.

Inception of KELTEC

On 18 January 1991 the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) signed an agreement with the Russian space agency

Glavkosmos Glavkosmos (russian: Главкосмос) is a subsidiary of the Russian State Space Corporation Roscosmos. On 26 February 1985, the Ministry of General Machine Building of the USSR issued an order that formed the Main Department for the creati ...

for the transfer of cryogenic technology. After the collapse of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

, Russia was under considerable American influence. In this backdrop, both Glavkosmos and ISRO anticipated the United States would try and stymie the deal. So Glavkosmos and ISRO drew up a back-up plan to outsource the manufacture of the cryogenic engines to Kerala Hi-tech Industries Limited (KELTEC). The arrangement was designed to get around the provisions of the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR). The space czars of the two countries, Aleksey Vasin, officer-in-charge of cryogenic technology in Glavkosmos, and ISRO Chairman U.R. Rao – reckoned that if Russian cryogenic technology was passed on to ISRO via KELTEC, technically it would not be a violation of the MTCR.

References

{{Reflist Government-owned companies of Kerala Indian companies established in 1991 Indian companies disestablished in 2007 1991 establishments in Kerala Manufacturing companies established in 1991 Manufacturing companies of India