India Now A Space Power

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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.

 

http://www.india-today.com/itoday/20010430/cover4.shtml

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.

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

THE BIG BOYS: Perumal(left) and Kasturirangan celebrate

 

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.

Perumal—The Force Behind The GSLV

 

Interview: K. Kasturirangan

India's longest 17 Minutes In Space

Satellite Launches

Perumal is what is known in ISRO as a "failure analysis junkie" and

for him to look concerned meant that something serious was wrong. An

engineering graduate from Karaikudi in Tamil Nadu and a masters in

aeronautics from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, the

homegrown Perumal has emerged as one of ISRO's top rocketeers. He was

associated with the PSLV right from its conception in 1980. After the

successful launch of the PSLV in 1994, while everyone was celebrating

with more than just plain soda, Perumal was busy poring over the

flight data to see "where we were riding on the skin of our teeth on

some stages".

 

When Perumal took over in 1996 as project director of GSLV, it had

had a turbulent history. As had ISRO's rocket programme. After the

initial breakthrough of sending a small satellite launch vehicle

called simply slv3 in 1980, the organisation experienced a string of

failures while trying to augment the nation's rocket capability. It

was not till the early 1990s and that too after the first failed

launch of PSLV that ISRO recovered and notched up a string of

successes.

 

 

 

 

 

PROBLEM SOLVED: A fault on the strap-on booster led to the first

attempt being aborted

 

For GSLV, ISRO had to master the ultra-sophisticated cryogenic fuel

technology. In 1992, Russia agreed to sell a few engines and transfer

the technology for Rs 235 crore. But the US, worried that the

cryogenic engine would equip India with Inter-Continental Ballistic

Missile (ICBM) technology, turned the heat on Russia saying the deal

violated the Missile Technology Controls Regime (MTCR) to which

Russia was a signatory. Russia reneged on the deal and agreed to

supply India only seven such cryogenic engines for future launches

and refused to transfer the technology. Since then ISRO has embarked

on a challenging programme to build a similar cryogenic engine

indigenously and hopes to mount the Indian version on the GSLV from

the third launch onwards expected in 2003.

 

If there was a rocket stage about which Perumal had expected trouble

it was in the Russian-built cryogenic one that had never been

validated on flight before, not even in Russia. So he was shaken by

the deviation the graph was showing during the four minutes that the

tested and tried second-stage liquid engine was firing. However, he

was puzzled by the fact that all the vital parameters from the

computer console showed the engine performing normally. It would be

only after the flight that the ISRO team found that there was a

simple error in the plotting mechanism on the graph board. Their

worry only increased when the cryogenic stage also seemed to be

underperforming. This was a critical stage which doubles the speed of

the spacecraft and finally injects the satellite at a speed of 10.2

km per second.

 

 

 

 

 

STATE OF ART: India has already earned a name for itself in building

satellites

The cryogenic stage had the longest burn time of close to five

minutes and 14 seconds. Now it was the turn of the Russian scientists

involved in the project to look concerned. Just when it looked as if

things were going terribly wrong, the craft picked up speed and at

the final injection point over Indonesia, just 17 minutes after blast

off, it was 60 m per second slower than the required velocity for the

satellite. It meant that the experimental satellite, GSAT 1, would

have to use some of its precious onboard fuel to make up for the

shortfall, possibly cutting its anticipated life of three years by

about five months. Yet, for the overall mission, the deviation was

within expected parameters and Kasturirangan declared the mission "an

exceptional success", adding with relief, " It was the longest 17

minutes for Indian space." For Perumal the slight shortfall in the

final stage was like a pimple that marred an otherwise beautiful

flight.

 

For the other members of the space club, GSLV's first launch was seen

as an impressive performance. "India has become one of the space

powers of the world with this launch," said A.I. Dounaev, chairman of

Russian space agency Glavkosmos. He added, "After a few more launches

India will soon be able to enter the arena of commercial launches

with the GSLV and it will have the cost advantage over other

countries." The cost factor is certainly a plus for India because its

launches are on average cheaper by 15 per cent than comparable

Western launchers. The world market for communications launchers is

dominated by Ariane which accounts for close to 60 per cent of the

total launches annually. It is followed by the US and Russia, with

China too trying to catch up. Dounaev doesn't see India eating into

the Russian share of the market and says that it could tap the south-

east Asian and Arabian markets.

 

Ariane, which bags most of the contracts for launching the INSAT

satellites, was equally impressed. In Paris, Didier Aubin, its

director, sales and marketing, said, "It is a significant step.

Indians have shown that when they want to do something they can do

it. It takes time to do it but they have the will to succeed." Aubin

feels that India can compete for the niche market segment in the geo-

satellite launch business and if it pumps in more money into the

programme it can be a serious player in the business. Kasturirangan

agrees. The problem is that unlike in other space faring countries,

the private sector in India is not involved in building launchers in

a big way.

 

Also with the growing demand for heavier satellites of four-tonnes

capacity, which means many more transponders for the same launch

costs, the GSLV with its ability to lift a payload of only two tonnes

may not find many takers. ISRO itself will have to shop outside for

launches for the new heavier INSAT class satellites it is building.

Madhavan Nair, director, Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, where much of

Indian rocketry is conceived and built, admits that there would have

to be major improvements in the GSLV's performance before it can

become commercially viable. "We need to double our carrying capacity

while cutting costs by half. To make a mark, we have to show that we

are more reliable and less expensive than the rest," he says. In the

next few years, Nair and his team are working on ways to augment

GSLV's capability to make it more competitive. Two more GSLV launches

are scheduled, one early next year.

 

Unfortunately for ISRO, the market for low earth orbit communication

satellites that had exploded when Iridium and Globalstar set up the

satellite mobile telephony business has now collapsed along with the

two companies. These two companies had between them launched close to

100 satellites in the past five years. Admits N. Sampath, executive

director of Antrix, ISRO's marketing arm: "It's tough going now even

though PSLV is a highly competitive launcher." PSLV is currently

being hired for experimental satellites and in the next flight

expected in July, a Belgium and a German firm have bought space. The

money isn't much-just $1 million each. ISRO earns much more from the

satellite business. It has a $100 million contract with intelsat to

lease out 11 of its transponders for 10 years. And in remote sensing

it has sold data from IRS for around $10 million.

 

Yet all this is chickenfeed for the huge potential that commercial

space business offers. If ISRO's newfound prowess is to grow then it

has to demonstrate this through economic viability. It has all the

potential to be a big player but it needs money to compete. Says

Ariane's Aubin: "If you can fund the programme well now, you can make

a very big jump and be a player to reckon with." Now India and ISRO

must decide whether they want to take on the world in the global

space business.