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"Textbook precision" launching of Educational
Satellite brings India to the forefront of commercial
space technology ready to compete with Europe, Russia
and America!
Prabash Sachdev, Special Correspondent
September 22, 2004
India is now ready to compete with Americans. Russians
and Europeans in commercial Space Missions! The GSLV
(F-01) rocket successfully launched the education
satellite, Edusat, into the geosynchronous transfer
orbit from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre here on
Monday. Launched with 'textbook precision', the first
operational flight of the Geosynchronous Satellite
Launch Vehicle took to the skies against a blue
background at exactly 16.01 pm. A little over 17
minutes after the lift-off, Edusat was injected into
the GTO, which in addition to drawing loud rounds of
applause also brought a sigh of relief amongst the
ISRO's top brass. “The first reports have shown that
there is practically no deviation from the set
trajectory,'' said ISRO Director G Madhavan Nair.
“India had shown to the world that it was capable of
doing a complete job with thoroughness and
precision,'' he said. The tenth consecutive successful
launch for ISRO and the third for GSLV, the event
marks a new era in the nation's quest for
dissemination of knowledge. When fully operational,
Edusat would provide connectivity to schools and
colleges, and also support non-formal education and
promote a nation-wide interactive e-learning
initiative. “The satellite has multiple regional beams
and each can cover between 50 to 200 classrooms. This
would be used for teachers training, to demonstrate
costly science and technology experiments, for adult
literacy programmes and also for an interactive,
multi-media, multi-casting system,'' Nair said.
FINAL DECISION AT 9.30 AM:
But for all the success of the day, the launch had
very nearly been called off. “With heavy rains and
high winds over the last two days, especially in the
early hours of this morning, the mission was very
nearly aborted,'' Nair said. However, with the skies
lighting up, the final decision to go ahead with the
launch was taken only around 9.30 am. Added to this
was a new problem. “The new programme called ‘Day of
the Launch Wind Scheme', where a balloon is sent about
20 km into the atmosphere to measure wind velocity,
was delayed. The balloon burst while it was being sent
into the atmosphere, but we got a replacement in
time,'' said G Ravindranath, GSLV project director at
the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre.
INDIGENOUS ENGINE ON TRACK:
Talking to the media after the launch, Madhavan Nair
said that the development of the indigenous cryogenic
engine was on track as the ground tests have been
completed, and it was expected to be in the
flight-worthy stage in a year's time. Nair said that
the second launch pad at Sriharikota would be
operational for the launch of the next of the PSLV
series scheduled for February next year. “This is
expected to be functional for launches of GSLV class
satellites by mid 2005,'' he added. Regarding the
committee report on the mishap here early this year,
he said that it was a freak incident where a leakage
during the process of casting the solid propellant led
to the accident. Nair said Antrix Corporation, the
commercial arm of the Department of Space, had
achieved a turnover of Rs 300 crore last year, which
is a three-fold increase compared to the previous
year. The company had also earned a net profit of Rs
30 crore.
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