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COVER STORY: GSLV LAUNCH
India Is Now A Space
Power
GSLV's successful launch puts India in the reckoning
for a share of the $10 billion global space business. But to fully exploit
the potential India needs to pump in big money to make its satellite launchers
more competitive.
By Raj Chengappa in Sriharikota
When a new member
joins the exclusive club of a handful of nations that have achieved technological
mastery over space it has the privilege of announcing it in a thunderous
style. And with a blazing visual signature across the firmament. As India
did that magical afternoon of April 18 on the tiny island of Sriharikota
where the Bay of Bengal wets the Andhra shores and where wild birds from
as far off as Siberia spend the summer nesting.
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QUANTUM LEAP: The
GSLV lifts off from SHAR |
A thunderstorm had been predicted that afternoon.
But much to the relief of scientists, an hour before the launch a giant
invisible broom swept away the tufts of clouds that littered the sky.
It seemed as if even nature had decided that nothing should mar the historic
moment that would signal the true coming of age of India's four-decades-old
space programme.
Inside the concrete control room, the five giant
TV monitors flashed different views of the gleaming white and grey Geosynchronous
Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) as it stood in majestic isolation at the
launch pad. In the backdrop, you couldn't tell where the ocean met the
sky-it was one continuous canvas of serene blue. The 11-storey-tall rocket
fumed like some primeval monster as super-cooled or cryogenic fuels-colder
than the thickest ice mountains in Antarctica-were pumped in automatically
to its upper stage.
Strapped onto the base of the rocket were four
giant boosters, each the size of an Airbus A320. One of these had failed
leading to the first attempt to launch GSLV being aborted on March 28
just four seconds after the strap-ons were ignited. Scientists had narrowed
down the problem to an S-shaped pipe with the diameter of a one-rupee
coin that fed the oxidiser fluid to the chamber. A speck of lead left
behind while bending the pipe during manufacture caused the constriction
making the fuel flow uneven and resulting in the engine malfunctioning.
Space, as K. Kasturirangan, chairman, Indian
Space Research Organisation (ISRO) observed wryly, is the most unforgiving
of wives. Even a minute error could lead to a major catastrophe. As Kasturirangan
slipped on a white medical gown to enter the sanitised section of the
control room, he admitted that he was tense. "It is like after coming
out of a serious infection. You keep worrying of a relapse even if the
slightest symptoms occur."
The head of India's space programme understood
just how important the success of the launch was to the country. For it
was the biggest rocket that India had ever built. Costing Rs 125 crore,
it could catapult a satellite weighing 1.53 tonnes, or as much as two
Maruti 800 cars, into an orbit 36,000 km in space. In this geo-stationary
orbit, the satellite matches the speed of the earth's rotation so that
it appears still in relation to the earth's movement.
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THE BIG BOYS: Perumal(left) and Kasturirangan celebrate
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Such an orbit is required for communications
satellites like the Indian National Satellite System (INSAT) series that
transmit Doordarshan signals and facilitate long-distance telephone calls
without a break in transmission. The orbit is the only way possible for
the satellite to constantly hover above India. To do that the satellite
has to be injected at a velocity of 36,720 km per hour which is 40 times
faster than what an Airbus A300 normally travels and eight times quicker
than any fighter jet the Indian Air Force boasts of.
For ISRO, it was as Kasturirangan said, "A
quantum leap in technological competence." A few years back, the
organisation had mastered the technology of building a launcher that could
eject a one-tonne satellite into an orbit around the poles at an altitude
of 800 km. Called the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) it was important
for sending up remote sensing satellites, so called because these are
able to send back images from a remote location in the sky that helps
India map its natural resources among other things.
In satellite technology, India is almost state-of-the-art,
having mastered building both the Indian Remote Sensing (IRS) series and
the INSAT generation of satellites that the country earlier used to purchase
from the US. What India didn't have was a launcher that could put the
INSAT satellites into orbit. For that India still relies on the European
Space Programme's Ariane rocket, paying an average of Rs 300 crore for
each launch. Now with GSLV, the country would not only be able to save
foreign exchange on such launches but also compete for a share in the
$10 billion (Rs 47,000 crore) global communications space business.
The launch would also put India in the exclusive
club of space powers that have as its members only Russia, US, China,
Japan and a consortium of European nations led by France. So tough was
the business that Japan after having entered the club in 1994 with its
H-II rocket failed in the next six launches and even abandoned its programme
to send up communications satellites. But India saw for itself a niche
to sell not just PSLV launches but also undertake launches for communications
satellites with GSLV. It was a high-stakes game where precision was a
prerequisite.
Like the first launch attempt, everything had
gone like clockwork after the countdown began two days earlier. The inclement
weather had resulted only in the launch being advanced by four minutes.
It was now lifting off at 3.43 p.m. At T-0, as the blast-off time is called
in space parlance, the eastern horizon lit up and the 400 tonne spacecraft
began to rise on what seemed to be a giant tail of fire. It was so luminous
that the eyes hurt if you focused on the flame for too long. GSLV rose
silently into the sky gathering momentum with amazing rapidity. Within
seconds it was travelling faster than the speed of sound. So much so that
only when it was well up in the sky did the deep roar of its engines began
to reverberate across the sky. The sound was as loud as 20 Boeing jets
taking off simultaneously. By then the space craft had taken a calculated
roll and headed towards the Indonesian coast.
As it disappeared into deep space, everybody's
eyes were focused on a graph that had a thick red line drawn across indicating
the path the spacecraft was expected to take. It was rapidly being covered
by a green line that steadily blipped and represented the trajectory GSLV
was actually taking on flight. Everyone cheered when the first stage motor
performed to perfection and was then ejected from the spacecraft. Along
with the strap-on boosters, the giant motor fell harmlessly into the Indian
Ocean. But when the second-stage motor ignited, mission director R.V.
Perumal noticed an anomaly on the screen graph. The motor seemed to be
underperforming and was deviating from the expected trajectory. The normally
unflappable Perumal admitted he was tense and worried.
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