The failure of an Indian rocket during the launch of a hefty communications satellite is a setback but not a major blow to the country鈥檚 three-decade-old space programme, officials claimed on Tuesday.
The rocket disintegrated in a plume of smoke and flames seconds after lift-off on Monday. Its ill-fated payload was India鈥檚 heaviest communications satellite to date, which was intended for geosynchronous orbit.
It is the fifth time since 1979 that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has failed in its attempt to launch a satellite, but followed 11 consecutive successful rocket flights.
Advertisement
鈥淚 don鈥檛 feel there is something fundamentally wrong with [the rocket] since the previous two launches were successful,鈥� said Roddam Narasimha, a member of India鈥檚 policy-making Space Commission. 鈥淓very failure is a bit of a setback but the Indian space agency鈥檚 record as a whole is very good. The failure of one satellite cannot harm the space research programme.鈥�
Separation issues
The 49-metre (161-foot) rocket, called the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), was carrying a 2168-kilogram INSAT 4-C television satellite. It aimed to place the satellite into orbit 36,000 kilometres (22,320 miles) above the Earth.
The failure came less than a day after an unsuccessful test flight of India鈥檚 Agni-III ballistic missile, a nuclear-capable rocket with a range of 4000 kilometres (2480 miles). Indian scientists, citing preliminary data, blamed problems in the separation process in both the two-stage Agni-III and the three-stage GSLV as the cause of their failures.
The lift-off of the GSLV was normal, said G Madhavan Nair, chairman of the ISRO. 鈥淏ut after a few seconds the vehicle did not follow the designed trajectory 鈥� it deviated. After about 60 seconds, some parts of the vehicle broke up.鈥�
He added: 鈥淭he problem developed during the first stage 鈥� the motor was not developing thrust. But the failure was not due to a design flaw.鈥� Nair pledged to have the GSLV up again within a year.
Large cluster
The launch cost $33 million, which U R Rao, former chief of the Space Commission, said is small compared to other nations鈥� space budgets.
India has nine other communication satellites with a total of 175 transponders in operation, making it the largest domestic communication satellite system in the Asia-Pacific and the world鈥檚 biggest civilian cluster of remote-sensing satellites.
鈥淭here has been a setback but its scale should be placed in context because countries before India who have embarked upon satellite launch business have also gone through a similar learning curve,鈥� said Uday Bhaskar, deputy director of India鈥檚 state-funded Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis.
