Ethereal Exploration Guild unveils 150-acre rocket testing facility near Sriharikota

Facility location and scale

Bengaluru-based private space technology company Ethereal Exploration Guild (The Guild) on Friday unveiled The Anchorage, a 150-acre rocket development and testing facility at Space City, roughly 40 km from the Satish Dhawan Space Center (SDSC-SHAR) at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh's Tirupati district, according to company-reported coverage. The site is intended to integrate manufacturing with testing and refurbishment for the company's planned launch vehicle.

Vehicle and propulsion plans

The facility is designed to support development and qualification of the Razor Crest Mk 1 (RCM1), described as a fully reusable medium-lift launch vehicle intended to recover and reuse both its booster and upper stage. Coverage identifies two semi-cryogenic engines under development: Pegasus, an 80-kilonewton engine intended for the reusable upper stage and featuring what the company described as a first-of-its-kind full-flow segregated cooling cycle and dual-thrust-chamber configuration, and Stallion, a 1.2-meganewton gas-generator engine intended for lift-off and atmospheric ascent. The Guild said the engine feed-cycle technology was developed in-house and is intended specifically to enable upper-stage reusability.

Stated testing scope

Reporting states The Anchorage will support testing and qualification at multiple levels, beginning with individual engine components and progressing to integrated propulsion systems and complete rocket stages. According to the company, engine testing is meant to establish propulsion performance, while stage qualification is intended to assess how the propulsion system works together with tanks, feed systems, and other stage hardware.

Company leadership comments

Co-founder and CEO Manu J. Nair said The Anchorage represents a long-term investment in the infrastructure needed to test, manufacture, and repeatedly operate the RCM1, and that achieving full reusability requires an integrated industrial ecosystem combining manufacturing, qualification, and refurbishment throughout the rocket's operational life, according to the company's reported remarks. Co-founder Prashanth Sharma is also cited in coverage as framing engine testing as the foundation for propulsion performance assessment.

Next verifiable milestone

The Guild has not, in the supplied reporting, announced a scheduled first test-firing or first flight date for the RCM1 from The Anchorage; the next verifiable milestone covered is the company's planned progression from component-level engine testing toward integrated propulsion and full-stage qualification.