Agni-III missile run a success test-fire

2010-02-07 17:54:42 - "The fourth test-firing of the Agni-III missile was carried out at 1050 hours on Sunday. It was for the full range and it hit the target with pin-point accuracy and met all the mission objectives," Defence Ministry spokesman Sitanshu Kar said.

Official media reports from the Defence sources that all parameters of the mission were accomplished during the test fire conducted today from a rail mobile launcher near Dhamara, about 100 kilometers from Balasore this morning.

The missile with a range of more than 3,000 kilometers is seventeen -metre long marker pen like Agni-III is 2 metres in diameter and has a two-stage solid propellant system with a pay load capability of 1.5 tonnes. "During the course of the flight, the missile reached a peak height of 350 kms and re-entered the atmosphere successfully tolerating the skin temperatures of nearly 3000 degree Celsius," Kar said.

The defence spokesman said the launch was part of the pre-induction trial and "now the missile system will be fully inducted into the armed forces."
A number of radars and electro-optical tracking systems along the coast of Orissa monitored the path of the missile and evaluated all the parameters in real-time, Kar said.

Equipped with a state-of-the-art advanced computer, the navigation system used for guiding the missile to its target is the "first of its kind", he said.
However this is the fourth flight test in the Agni-III series carried out to establish the repeatability of the missile's performance. The entire trajectory of today's trial was monitored through various telemetry stations, electro-optic systems and sophisticated radars located along the coast, in Port Blair and by Naval ships anchored near the impact point in the down range area for data analysis. Agni-III missile is powered by a two-stage solid propellant system. With a length of 17 metres, the missile's diameter is 2 metres and launch weight is 50 tonnes. It can carry a payload of 1.5 tonnes which is protected by carbon-carbon all composite heat shield.