The Hindu Business Line : `An assured access to space'

ON JULY 18, 1980, India's SLV-3 (Satellite Launch Vehicle), painted white and grey, rose from its launch-pad at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. It put a 38.5-kg satellite, Rohini, in orbit. The Project Director of that mission was A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who is now President of India. That "fantastic success," as Vasant Gowariker, then the Director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), Thiruvananthapuram, described it, made India the seventh member of the space club.

Today, in just 25 years, "we have an assured access to space," says S. Ramakrishnan, Project Director, Launch Vehicle Mark III. "We can build any type of launch vehicle, we can fabricate any kind of satellite and put those satellites in different types of orbit. We are not at the mercy of anyone," he added. He is heading the team that is building "an animal" called Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle-Mark III (GSLV-MkIII). It has a lift-off weight of 630 tonnes and can put a four-tonne satellite in a geo-synchronous transfer orbit with an apogee of 36,000 km and a perigee of 180 km.

The rockets India has built include SLV-3s, Augmented Satellite Launch Vehicles (ASLV), Polar Satellite Launch Vehicles (PSLV) and the GSLVs. These vehicles have sent into orbit Rohini, remote-sensing satellites (IRS), weather satellites (Metsat), education satellites (Edusat), resource-mapping satellites (Resourcesat), a Technology Experiment Satellite (TES) and so on. The PSLVs have put six satellites belonging to other countries in orbit. ISRO is now in the commercial era.

Today, it has the capability to send probes to the moon. Said R. Aravamudan, former Director of both SHAR and ISRO Satellite Centre, Bangalore, "The saga of Indian space research has been an exciting one."

The VSSC, built around Thumba and the Veli Hills on the edge of the Arabian Sea, is ISRO's nervecentre and builds all its launch vehicles.

Sriharikota was chosen in 1969 for launching rockets to orbit satellites. It has a sophisticated Mission Control Centre. The Solid Propellant Booster Plant, or SPROB, here is the biggest facility in the world for manufacturing solid propellants. It has facilities to store liquid propellants and cryogenic fluids, beds for testing rocket motors, and also telemetry and telecommand stations.

The second launch pad is a "versatile, universal" complex where any type of launch vehicle can be built and launched. SHAR was renamed the Satish Dhawan Space Centre on September 5, 2002. India's first satellite, Aryabhatta, was built in tin-roofed sheds at Peenya, Bangalore, between 1973 and 1975. Today, the ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC), Bangalore, stands in a category of its own. There are other important centres such as the National Remote-Sensing Agency, Hyderabad; the Space Application Centre, Ahmedabad; the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre, Mahendragiri, Tamil Nadu; the Master Control Facility, Hassan (Karnataka) and Bhopal.

The seeds of India's modern rocketry programme were sown on November 21, 1963, when a Nike-Apache rocket, made in the US, rose from Thumba. The rocket, weighing 715 kg and powered by solid propellants, reached an altitude of 208 km before it released the sodium vapour.

Prof Vikram Sarabhai, who founded India's space programme, was present at Thumba. Also present were Prof E.V. Chitnis, Prof P.D. Bhavsar, H.G.S. Murthy and Kalam. At Dr Sarabhai's instance, Prof Chitnis, Prof Bhavsar, Dr A.E. Muthunayagam and later Dr Vasant R. Gowariker and Dr S.C. Gupta had given up jobs in the US or the UK to sign up with the country's infant space programme.

The Nike-Apache launch was an international effort under the auspices of the United Nations. The rocket was from the US, and the sodium vapour payload French. It came from payload specialist Prof Jacques Blamont's laboratory in the US. The person who brought the sodium vapour payload and the mechanical timer from the US in time for the launch was Mr Kalam.

India's indigenous rocket programme began on February 22, 1969, when a "pencil rocket", weighing 10 kg and powered by about 350 kg of solid propellants, rose from Thumba. The first SLV-3 flight rose from SHAR on August 10, 1979. It, however, failed.

Mr Aravamudan calls the first 10 years (1963-73) of India's space programme "the Vikram Sarabhai decade," a decade of "vision, dreams and hopes." The next decade belonged to Prof Dhawan and it was a period of "consolidation and concretisation of programmes." Programmes such as the SLV-3, Aryabhatta and Bhaskara satellites and the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) programme came to fruition.

The third decade (1973-83) was the U.R. Rao decade. It saw "peak activity" in the development of sub-systems and components of launch vehicles, spacecraft and ground segments. The fourth decade (1993-2003) was the Kasturirangan decade and it saw "rich returns from the investments made in the earlier decades. There were "resounding successes" in the PSLV and GSLV programmes.

With the successful SLV-3 launch in July 1980, Mr Kalam and his team members became heroes.

The next SLV-3 flight, on May 31, 1981, was only a partial success because one of the components in the vehicle malfunctioned. The Rohini satellite did not go into the projected orbit. It entered the earth's atmosphere after nine days and was burnt up.

But the fourth SLV-3 flight on April 17, 1983, was a big success. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, who was at SHAR, said, "I am thrilled, excited and proud." Mr Sandlas was the Project Director. The Rohini satellite in that mission carried an intelligent two-band camera called "smart sensor" which could contra-distinguish ground features such as water, vegetation and land-mass, and clouds.

The SLV-3s were followed by the ASLV. There were four flights of the ASLV. The first two failed but the third and fourth were clear successes.

Next came the bigger PSLVs. The first PSLV flight on September 20, 1993, was a failure. With eight consecutive successes after that, the PSLV has become ISRO's workhorse. ISRO's fourth-generation rockets are the gigantic GSLVs. Three GSLV flights in a row have succeeded. Thus, 11 flights (eight PSLVs and three GSLVs) have been consecutively successful.

From August 10, 1979, to May 6, 2005, 20 indigenously-built launch vehicles have lifted off from Sriharikota, carrying 21 satellites built at ISAC, Bangalore. Seventeen other satellites built at ISAC have been launched from Russia and Kourou in French Guiana. Another four satellites (INSAT-1 series) built by the US have been launched from there. Thus, India has orbited 42 satellites from 1979, of which 38 were built in India.

From the early 1970s, ISRO has launched more than 3,000 sounding rockets to probe the upper atmosphere from Thumba, Sriharikota and Balasore in Orissa.

One of the key men behind ISRO attaining mastery in building a variety of world-class satellites is the unassuming Dr P.S. Goel, who was till recently Director, ISAC.

India took an important step in acquiring the technology to build communication satellites when it fabricated the APPLE (Ariane Passenger Payload Experiment) spacecraft. Indian communication satellites called INSATs have brought about a communication revolution in the country. The meteorological component of INSATs or the dedicated Metsat have helped predict cyclones and consequent floods, saving lives. The country has also a dedicated Edusat.

Mr Nair said, "preparations are going on well" for Chandrayaan-1, India's first scientific mission to the moon. It would take place in 2008. The PSLV will be used for the mission and will orbit a satellite about 100 km above the moon's surface. It will take about six days for the 525-kg satellite to reach the lunar orbit.

The mission includes a probe, which will land on the moon's surface and study the moon soil. A Deep Space Network station will be set up near Bangalore and this station will provide continuous radio link with Chandrayaan-1.

According to Mr Nair, the Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) and the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Trombay, were working in tandem with ISRO on the Deep Space Network station. "They are developing a huge antenna," he said. Chandrayaan-1's payloads would include scientific instruments from the European Space Agency (ESA).

"Discussions with the US are in an advanced stage" for including its payloads in the satellite.

On November 21, 2003, Prof Blamont told ISRO engineers and scientists gathered at Thumba, "You have achieved the rank of a space power today and it was possible with the dedication of a large number of Indian space scientists and physicists. I very much admire that achievement."

ISRO today stands tall, self-reliant and world-class.

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