Ethereal Exploration Guild sets up 150-acre rocket test complex in Andhra Pradesh | Hyderabad News

Hyderabad: Ethereal Exploration Guild (The Guild) has set up a 150-acre rocket development and engine testing complex – The Anchorage – in Space City, Andhra Pradesh, about 40 km from Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota.The facility is aimed at supporting Razor Crest Mk 1, the company’s fully reusable medium-lift launch vehicle, including recovery and reuse of both booster and upper stage. The vehicle will use two semi-cryogenic engines: Pegasus, an 80 kN upper-stage engine, and Stallion, a 1.2 MN gas-generator booster engine.The Bengaluru-based startup has already deployed $3 million (around Rs 29 crore) in the facility with another $4-5 million being pumped into Phase-1 that includes the Pegasus static test facility and the vertical test facility.The Guild said the commissioned Pegasus horizontal static test facility is the operational centrepiece of the site that offers India’s highest-pressure-rated pressure-fed rocket engine test capability at 210 bar and can support component, ignition, thrust-chamber, turbomachinery and integrated engine firing tests. Pegasus’s first hot-fire test is planned at the site in November 2026.The Guild co-founder and CEO Manu J Nair said The Anchorage was a long-term investment in testing, manufacturing and repeated operation of Razor Crest Mk 1, adding that full reusability required an integrated industrial base linking qualification, refurbishment and production.The company is also developing Stallion Vertical Test Facility for meganewton-class engine firings and clustered-engine testing to advance from single-engine qualification to evaluating multiple engines operating together within RCM1’s booster architecture. Future stage-test infrastructure is planned to qualify propellant tanks, feed systems, structures, avionics, controls and flight software with propulsion systems.The startup’s co-founder and CTO Prashanth Sharma said The Anchorage is being developed to handle everything from Pegasus component testing and integrated firing to Stallion engine clusters and complete stages with the test data from the site feeding directly into design and hardware qualification.Planned manufacturing and refurbishment facilities will support tank fabrication, machining, welding, additive manufacturing, inspection, repairs and requalification of flown hardware before subsequent reflight campaigns.