It is almost nineteen years since India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) made its first successful flight. On Monday, this trusty rocket, with a distinctive configuration involving solid and liquid propulsion in its core stages, maintained its richly deserved reputation for rugged reliability. In the course of an unbroken chain of 22 successful launches, it has carried 27 Indian spacecraft as well as 35 foreign ones to space. It has taken earth-viewing satellites, which typically orbit the earth from pole to pole, as well as those like the meteorological satellite, Kalpana-1, and the communication satellite, GSAT-12, that need to linger thousands of kilometres above the equator. It lofted India’s Chandrayaan-1 on the first leg of its journey to the Moon. In its latest flight, the rocket's fourth stage twisted and turned very precisely to eject seven satellites, one after another, into just the right orbits. The primary payload on this occasion was the Indo-French ‘Satellite with ARgos and ALtika’ (SARAL). It is equipped with an altimeter that allows sea surface height to be measured from space with greater precision than before. With sea levels rising as a result of a steadily warming climate, this satellite will join other altimeter-bearing spacecraft in ensuring continuity of observation over the oceans. A large number of Indian scientists are part of an international team that will be carrying out projects utilising the satellite’s data. With SARAL, the Indian Space Research Organisation has been able to demonstrate the basic structure, known in technical parlance as a ‘bus,’ for a 400-kg-class satellite. The same ‘Indian Mini Satellite (IMS) Bus series-2’ will go into ADITYA-1, the Indian space agency’s scientific mission to observe the Sun’s corona, scheduled for launch in three to four years’ time.
There are some important missions coming up for ISRO this year. The next launch is likely to be that of the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) equipped with an indigenous cryogenic stage. The first flight with that indigenous stage three years ago had ended in failure and ISRO needs to show that it has mastered this difficult technology. The first of seven satellites for the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) is scheduled to go up later this year, as also the country’s first mission to Mars. A test of the more powerful GSLV Mark-III, with a dummy cryogenic stage, too is on the cards. Many challenges lie ahead and the Indian space agency must, in the words of President Pranab Mukherjee, who witnessed the latest launch, “raise the bar of its performance, scale greater heights and explore newer frontiers.”
This editorial has been corrected for a factual error
Keywords: PSLV, PSLV-C20, Indo-French satellite, satellite Saral, GSAT-12, Chandrayaan-1, ISRO, GSLV
India is one of the leading countries in PSLV technology but lagging
behind in GSLV technology. Mastering GSLV technology requires cutting
edge research which we usually tend to buy from foreign countries at a
high price.
Instead of spending people's money for buying satellites, using foreign
launch vehicle for GSLV satellites, buying foreign defence technologies,
India should develop required technologies by promoting indigenous
research.
The fact that the ISRO built Saral,the 407kg satellite with payloads argos and altika under the Indian Mini Satellite Bus series-2 had a successful launch assumes significance because it is the first mission of its kind, 6 other smaller payloads, 2 from Canada, 2 from Austria, 1 each from Denmark and UK respectively has also been launched.
This is the 23rd PSLV mission for ISRO and the 9th mission using PSLV 'core alone variant'. This also marks ISRO's tremendous achievement in launching the medium weight satellites for foreign agencies. So far 35 satellites for foreign agencies has successfully taken place, it proves how ISRO has invented a future for itself.
why waste money in such fancy research !!!! when a large portion of people in India sleep without food :(
i dont think ISRO has an answer to this, sadly !!
1.Indeed an achievement well deserving an applause from all.
2.But it has been decades since the technology is promised for the poor
also benefit from.
3.mobile phones have reached the poorest but why were they not
empowered to ask a collective question why they could not get other
basic service like food/nutrition/health/education.
4.Why most other shining Indians could not know that there were a mass
of people who still suffer with preventable afflictions and could be
educated easily for the same to be prevented?
5.Why most of the media dedicate its most of the time for cheap
entertainment than serious in depth discussion for uplifting ourselves.
6.Why most media still become the handiwork of the people who
politicise all things beyond repair and polarize the people and leave
them disunited for any change to be made collectively?
7.I would only pray that satelites be one day as cheap as mobile phones
to be able to be launched by everyone for everyone.
ISRO is a like a Gold medal on the chest of India. ISRO has successfully
achieved what many developed nation are still aspiring to achieve.
Indian scientists are world renowned. This accomplishments would
encourage more young minds to join ISRO rather than NASA. All hail our
Indian scientists.
Congratulations to ISRO for another successful PCLV launch! Key
strategic achievement will be a successful GSLV launch, arguably a
difficult technology to master. Let us wait and watch, and hope for the
best and work even harder to make it happen!
The impressive launch of PSLV 10 with its equally impressive payload of seven satellites with different functions including those on behalf of other countries,has sent out a clear message to the world that India has come of age in Space Technology.The travel has been long,arduous and no doubt slow but certainly very sure.Next will be other such lauches but soon we shall have put our own man on the Moon.We the people are proud of our scientists who have shown that we are second to none in whatever field we choose to enter.Let us hail these great stalwarts who have put us in a very prominent place in the world map of achievements.
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