Bhubaneswar, Sept. 5: India on Sunday successfully test-fired supersonic cruise missile BrahMos from Integrated Test Range (ITR) at Chandipur-on-sea in Balasore district, nearly 250 km from here.

The flight test was carried out at 11.35 am with the missile being launched from LC-III. “The results were excellent and the modified version of the missile was tested for full range. It met all the mission objectives,” said the ITR director, Mr S.P. Dash.

The 290-km range BrahMos is capable of carrying conventional warheads weighing 300 kg. The two-stage nine-metre missile has a diameter of 70 cm and weighs 3.9 tonnes with the canister.

“Soon after BrahMos left the launch pad, it reached a flat trajectory with supersonic speed. It dived vertically with its engine running at full throttle. It performed the manoeuvre when it was flying at a velocity of three times the speed of sound,” sources said.

According to experts, normally, a missile comes down gradually. Sunday’s test has proved the new capability of BrahMos, a product of the Indo-Russian collaboration, sources said.

But the BrahMos could be a laggard when India will become the first country to have cruise missiles that can fly at hypersonic speeds of over 6,000 km per hour. As an agreement for their joint development will be signed with Russia during the visit of the Russian President, Mr Dmitry Medvedev, in December.

The speed of the existing variant of BrahMos is half than that of the proposed ones. The hypersonic missiles are expected to be ready by 2015-16, the sources said.

The much-delayed first unit of Kudankulam nuclear power plant is also expected be made operational during the visit of Mr Medvedev.

The commissioning of the 1,000 MW Kudankulam-I, work on which began three years back, will set in motion the roadmap that the two countries are working on in atomic energy.