Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Tuesday, Jul 11, 2006
Business Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Tuesday, Jul 11, 2006 |
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Industry & Economy
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Science & Technology Agony revisits ISRO after 1997 Our Bureau
Bangalore , July 10 Ever since the space age dawned in 1957, no spacefaring country has been spared the agony of a failed launch, as a quick Web search would show. The US shuttle tragedies of Challenger and Columbia are still fresh in memory. India too has had its share. But not since October 1997 has ISRO been dealt such a blow. That was when the Insat-2D failed in orbit, four months after launch. ISRO has always had trouble with its launch vehicles, right from the early days. The SLV-3 in August 1979, the ASLV-I in March 1987, the ASLV-II in July 1988, and the PSLV-1D in September 1993 went awry. On top of this, in the early 90s the US prevented the erstwhile USSR from transferring to ISRO the vital technology for the GSLV's cryogenic engine. That put the GSLV programme back by 5-8 years. The GSLVs currently use the six cryo engines bought from Russia. The indigenous cryo engine is to be tested on GSLV MkII early next year. Whether the latest GSLV failure will delay the testing of MkII remains to be seen. Between 1957 and 1999, 390 of the 4,378 launches worldwide failed, according to information gleaned from the Web. Among them are the US Titan IV (1993); Russian Proton in 1996; and Arianespace's maiden Ariane5 launch in 1996. China was beset with five launch failures between 1991 and 1996, with one of them carrying an Intelsat satellite in February 1996. Japan lost H-II in the late 90s.
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