The Space Capsule Recovery Experiment II (commonly known as SRE-2) was an Indian re-entry demonstration experiment designed by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). It was a follow-on mission of SRE-1 which was successfully completed in January 2007. It was supposed to test some of the critical technologies for the Indian human spaceflight programme. The second mission was to carry three experiments devoted to biological science and an improved isothermal furnace with 1000 °C temperature to carry out materials science experiments. As of August 2016, SRE-2 is not mentioned in the ISRO official page. Comptroller and Auditor General of India released a report titled "Inordinate delay in realisation of SRE-2 mission" in 2014. Outcome Budget 2016-17 of Department of Space mentions that development of space grade color camera and image storage unit for SRE-2 would be undertaken during year 2016-17. On 4 January 2018, SRE-2 project was declared to be cancelled.

Objectives

The main objective of SRE-2 was to realise a fully recoverable capsule and provide a platform to conduct microgravity experiments on Microbiology, Agriculture, Powder Metallurgy etc.

Design

SRE-2 capsule would have four major pieces of hardware: New systems developed for SRE-2 included Carbon-Carbon Nosecone, Indigenous Beacons, etc.

Payloads

The SRE-2 was to carry three experiments devoted to biological science and an improved isothermal furnace with 1000 °C temperature to carry out materials science experiments. The materials science experiments will be carried out in the modified isothermal furnace. The main experiment by scientists at IIT Kanpur, is designed to study the effect of gravity on the liquid phase sintering behaviour of the powders. A model copper tin alloy will be studied to explore the basic nature of the sintering process which has important implication in powder metallurgy.

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