an arc-chamber, and a near-vacuum in the remaining part of the tunnel. The arc-chamber can reach several MPa, while pressures in the vacuum chamber can be as low as 0.1 Pa. This means that the pressure ratios of these tunnels are in the order of 10 million. Also, the temperatures of the hot gas are up to 5000 K. The arc chamber is mounted in the gun barrel. The high pressure gas is separated from the vacuum by a diaphragm. Prior to a test run commencing, a membrane separates the compressed air from the gun barrel breech. A rifle (or similar) is used to rupture the membrane. Compressed air rushes into the breech of the gun barrel, forcing a small projectile to accelerate rapidly down the barrel. Although the projectile is prevented from leaving the barrel, the air in front of the projectile emerges at hypersonic velocity into the working section. Naturally the duration of the test is extremely brief, so high speed instrumentation is required to get any meaningful data. Hypersonic Wind Tunnel Facility in India The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) commissioned three major facilities, namely a Hypersonic Wind Tunnel, a Shock Tunnel and a Plasma Tunnel at Vikram Sarabhai Space Center as part of its continuous and concerted efforts to minimize cost of access into space. This integrated facility was named as Satish Dhawan Wind Tunnel Complex as a tribute to Prof. Satish Dhawan, who has made very significant contributions in the field of wind tunnels and aerodynamics. ISRO Chairman A. S. Kiran Kumar said commissioning of such facilities would provide adequate data for design and development of current and future space transportation systems in India. Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) commissioned an advanced Hypersonic Wind Tunnel (HWT) test facility at Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Missile Complex on 20 December 2020 as part of facility development programme for Hypersonic Technology Demonstrator Vehicle project. MARHy, Hypersonic Wind Tunnel Facility in Orléans, France The MARHy Hypersonic low density Wind Tunnel, located at the ICARE Laboratory in Orléans, France, is a research facility used extensively for fundamental and applied research of fluid dynamic phenomena in rarefied compressible flows, applied to space research. Its name is an acronym for Mach Adaptable Rarefied Hypersonic and the wind tunnel is recorded under this name under the European portal MERIL. See also Wind tunnel Low speed wind tunnel High speed wind tunnel Supersonic