India's Space Odyssey: Preparing for the moon mission “Chandrayan”

In the holy month of Shravan (monsoon) when millions of devotees trekked to the height of Himalaya and prostrated before a big Shiva Lingam in the holy cave of Amarnath, Indian scientists had undertaken another journey to measure the height of infinite cosmic expansion to moons and mars and to the galaxies. Successful flight of the Satellite Launch Vehicle-3, 25 years ago, was the first step to India’s space journey to infinity. On the 18th July 1980, at 08.03.45 hour, the first space SLV-3, 22 meters tall and weighing 17 tonnes were launched. It had placed the 38.5 kg. Rohini satellite into orbit with the velocity of some 28,000 km an hour.

Some 3000 scientists and engineers spread out in various research centers in the country had worked to assemble some thousands of pieces and components, and hundreds of permutations and engineering drafts and designs mulled over for over 10 years to complete the successful mission. Notwithstanding the bitter experience of earlier unsuccessful launch on 10 August 1979, the undaunted entire space team dedicated to the project and the success of the SLV-3 launch in 1980 had placed India into the exclusive Space Age nations club.

Leader of that successful launch was Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam who collected a select team of high caliber engineers and scientists. Scientist Sage Satish Dhawan died 2 January 2002. It was Dhawan’s vision and guidance that provided the nation with leadership of Dr. Kalam who demonstrated his high performance qualities and created the pool of talented professionals who assembled more than one hundred thousand components, roughly 97 percent of them were indigenously produced for the first time.

In the series of Indian missile systems development, the Tactical Core Vehicle called Trishul ( the Trident of Lord Shiva), was launched on 16 September 1985. The surface-to-surface weapons system was named Prithvi ( the Earth) which was successfully launched on 25 February 1988. The Surface-to-Air missile system was named Akash (sky), and the anti-tank missile project was called Nag (Cobra) – named after the late Dr. B.D. Nag Chaudhari, a nuclear physicist, Defence Advisor to the Prime Minister and Vice-Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University.

In 1982, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam was appointed Director, Defence Research Development Laboratories. His appointment established the country’s resolve and commitment to space exploration. On 27 July, 1983, India launched the most advanced missile mission “Integrated Guided Missile Develoment Programme” (IGMDP). The IGMDP missile technology mission was undertaken “ in the spirit of India’s self-reliance” policy, wrote Kalam in his Wings of Fire. On 23 May 1989, India demonstrated its missile technological capability by successful launch of its Advanced configurated missile system named Agni (Fire).

In technological development the IGMDP “was like a bright flash on the Indian scientific firmament.” Until then the Missile Technology was the domain of a few advanced countries. No one believed that with what India had at that point of time, it could achieve all that was promised. Dr. Kalam rightly observed that the magnitude of the IGMDP was really unprecedented in India, and the schedules projected were quite quixotic by the norms and standards prevailing in the Indian Research and Development establishments. “The crux was going to be our mastery over missile technology”, and Kalam “ expected nothing from the advanced countries.”

The Missile Man of India recalls how he lifted the Indian science establishment to the Space Age missions. “ Technology is a group activity”, and he reasoned that the country needed leaders who could not only put their “ heart and soul into the missiles programme, but also carry along with them hundreds of other engineers and scientists.”
He encountered numerous contradictions and the official procedural absurdities that were prevalent in the government laboratories that had been functioning without accountability. The director had to counteract the prevailing non-peforming easy-going attitude of the public (government) sector units which believed that their performance would never be tested. The whole system – its people, procedures, infrastructure – had to be resurrected.

Kalam - literally means miracle. He decided to achieve something that was way beyond the country’s collective capability. But he had no illusions about the fact that unless his “ teams worked on the basis of proportion or probability, nothing would be achieved.” Under the dynamic leadership, within short span of four months, more than four hundred scientists in the country had began to work on India’s national missile programme.

Admittedly, the Indian space programme was/is not any country specific. It is rather Space Specific – aimed at cosmological exploration. Discussing his difficulties in working on such an ambitious mission at a high social cost, Dr. Kalam says that “what if we did not have the technological might of the Western countries, we knew we had to attain that might, and this determination was our driving force.”

Notwithstanding Kalam’s historical contribution to India’s space science, all he wished at that hour of judgment “was to be true to my way of life, to uphold the science of rocketry in my country and to retire with a clean conscience.” But for the Missile Man of India there was no retirement. In 2001, he retired from Defence Scientific Advisor to the Prime Minister and on 25 July 2002, Kalam was elected President of Indian Republic.

The greatful nation also remembers the Father of India’s Space programme – the late Vikram Sarabhai who was truly the founder of India’s space programme. On 22 February 1969, Sarabhai had launched the baby rocket nicknamed “pencil” .

In the foregrounds of St. Mary’s Magdalene church at the southern shore Thumba , control room was inside the residency of the Bishop’s home which was used as the work station center for the launch of the pencil, weighing 10 kg. with 350 grams of solid fuel.

During the last 25 years, twenty huge launch vehicles have lifted off from Sriharikota. And Indian Science Research Organization’s Satellite Centre (Banglore) had built several advanced satellites for research in various fields of remote-sensing, communication and weather forecasting . The Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre is engaged in building an ambitious 630 tonnes of Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV)-Mark III. As the nation celebrates the Silver Jubilee of its Space Odyssey, the world awaits India’s Moon Mission “Chandrayan” in 2008.