The Hindu Business Line : India's race to space

FROM the outside, the building that was once St Mary Magdalene's church at Thumba looks very much like the other churches that dot Kerala's landscape. But the similarity ends there. For, this church was where India's space programme really took off.

Thumba, a coastal village few kilometres north of Thiruvananthapuram, was chosen the country's first rocket launching station. St Mary Magdalene's church and a few surrounding buildings became the first laboratories of the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station.

The early days were devoted to learning how to launch the US- and France-made sounding rockets that carried scientific instruments for atmospheric studies. Next came the manufacture of indigenously built sounding rockets, the first of which was launched in November 1967.

Even at that time Dr Vikram Sarabhai, the founder of India's space programme, had begun talking about the possibility of developing satellites and also of launch vehicles capable of putting satellites into orbit.

In a book to commemorate 20 years of rocketry at Thumba, the President, Mr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, the first director of the SLV-3 project, recalls how, in 1970, Vikram Sarabhai had said: "In 10 years we should be able to acquire the capability not only of building telecommunications satellites, but also of launching them into geosynchronous orbit from our new range on the Sriharikota island."

Sarabhai had grasped early on that applications in remote sensing, communication and meteorology made possible by satellites would be of great benefit.

This vision was the basis of a long-term strategy to prove the utility of applications using foreign satellites, then build Indian ones for those applications and finally launch our own satellites. Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh was chosen as the launch pad for India's satellite launch vehicles. At the same time the Space Science and Technology Centre in Thiruvananthapuram — now known as the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) — was entrusted with the responsibility of developing the first Satellite Launch Vehicle — SLV-3.

Modelled on the lines of the American Scout rocket, the SLV-3 was a four-stage rocket that used solid propellants. And though inspired by the Scout, the SLV-3 was not a copy. Rather, space scientists understood the design principles and applied them to suit India's requirements using materials, propellants and systems available in the country.

Though simple by launch vehicle standards, the SLV-3 was not easy to develop. For one, most scientists at Thumba had limited experience in rocketry, and that too of building sounding rockets. And a huge technological and project management gulf separated sounding rockets and launch vehicles.

Sounding rockets are smaller, lighter and less complex as they only have to rise vertically till the propellant runs out. Launch vehicles, however, require a number of complex systems to work together to take the rocket along a trajectory and put a satellite in a pre-determined orbit. For a launch vehicle to succeed, complex onboard systems such as sensors and guidance systems must work perfectly.

The SLV-3 project was also a formidable task as the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) had never attempted to develop such large, solid motors before. Also, the SLV-3 would have to use guidance systems to control its flight; again a new area for Indian scientists. The SLV-3 team and the entire ISRO family also had to cope with a crushing blow, that of Vikram Sarabhai's death on December 30, 1971.

Despite these challenges ISRO's scientists soldiered on and after almost a decade, the SLV-3 was ready to fly. The first experimental flight, on August 10, 1979, however, failed. Dr Vasant Gowariker, a former director of VSSC and former Secretary, Department of Science and Technology, who was part of the SLV-3 team, tells Business Line that it was "a great pity" that the first launch was a failure due to a "minor reason".

Eleven months later, at 8-03 a.m. on July 18, 1980, the SLV-3 was launched successfully. After little over an hour, it put a 35-kg Rohini satellite into orbit. With this, India became a member of an exclusive club of nations that could launch satellites. For India, the successful launch of the SLV-3 proved to be the foundation on which its space programme would stand. The launch as Dr Gowariker puts it, "opened up the whole vista of multi-stage, controlled rocketry to India".

The launch of the SLV-3 also gave ISRO the project management capabilities required for more ambitious projects. ISRO went on to build the Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicle, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV).

Today, even as the PSLV and the GSLV continue to launch earth imaging and communications satellites, ISRO has embarked on a mission to put an Indian spacecraft on the moon. The PSLV will, in fact, carry India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft on the first leg of its journey to the moon. So on July 28, when the President, Mr Abdul Kalam, inaugurates the 25th anniversary celebrations of the first successful flight of the SLV-3, it will also mark the beginning of India's race to the stars.

St Mary Magdalene's church, now a space museum, will, of course, be a witness to these celebrations.

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Reclusive RBI

Where are Pakistan's commodities headed?

Carrot of financial autonomy with the stick of performance

India's race to space — from SLV-3 to Chandrayaan

Gender budget

HR, no longer a back-end activity

Monetary Policy Quarterly Review — RBI prefers the status quo

EPFO portal

PM's US visit