8 hours Ago By Dr BR Guruprasad
Today, Bengaluru boasts of ultra-clean and sophisticated facilities for building satellites and the more capable robotic spacecraft for exploring worlds beyond the earth. In fact, facilities where a satellite is skilfully assembled, tested and gets ready to travel to the launch centre exist under one roof in a sprawling building complex near the HAL Airport which forms part of ISRO’s UR Rao Satellite Centre (URSC).Satellites and robotic spacecraft that took final form in URSC, including INSAT and IRS series of satellites as well as more resilient robotic spacecraft like Chandrayaan-1, 2 and 3, Mars Orbiter Mission (aka Mangalyaan) and Aditya-L1 have served (and continue to serve) the country well through their invaluable service and conspicuous achievements.
Thus, it is not an exaggeration to say that satellites have now become an integral part of our economic infrastructure and are contributing to the comprehensive security of our country. Today, about 50 communications, weather watching, cartographic/resource survey and navigation satellites are serving the country.Firm foundationIn this context, it is difficult to believe that the endeavour to build India’s first satellite began in 1972 in the Industrial sheds of Peenya, then a developing industrial estate outside Bengaluru.
But that is how the genesis of the Indian satellite programme occurred under the mercurial leadership of Prof Udupi Ramachandra Rao, better known as UR Rao, a protégé of Dr Vikram Sarabhai, the architect of the Indian space programme. Overawed by his persona, Prof UR Rao was and still is respectfully and fondly referred to simply as ‘Prof Rao’ in the Indian space fraternity.Though originally from Udupi in coastal Karnataka with a very modest background, Prof Rao was largely educated and served outside the state.
Nevertheless, he was able to sense the advantages offered by Bengaluru for high-tech work and endeavoured to build India’s first artificial earth satellite named as ‘Aryabhata’ (after the famed 5th century Indian astronomer and mathematician) before its launch on April 19, 1975 by a Soviet rocket.Taskmaster personifiedA fervent taskmaster, Prof Rao had the ability to inspire and galvanise young engineers and other staff. Coupled with this, through his proactive adoption of innovative administrative and purchase procedures, he was able to fructify the task of building India’s very first satellite in less than three years.
The Aryabhata SatelliteThe success of the launch of Aryabhata and the invaluable experience ISRO engineers gained in meeting the challenges during its development, and, more importantly during its orbital life, put a solid edifice to the subsequent highly successful Indian satellite programme. Things had to be learnt the hard way.Aryabhata was not an isolated achievement.
Prof Rao was well prepared and had planned to sustain and expand it during the subsequent years in a systematic way. Thus, Aryabhata gave way to the two experimental earth observation satellites ‘Bhaskara 1 and 2’ and India’s first experimental communication satellite ‘APPLE’. The lessons learnt during these programmes made Indian satellite scientists to confidently go ahead with the development of India’s first indigenously built operational satellite IRS-1A.
Into the operational eraThe success scored by IRS-1A further emboldened ISRO scientists to surge ahead to build the second generation of INSAT series of satellites with nearly twice the weight and service capability of the earlier INSAT-1 series procured from the US. In the 1990s, the fact that IRS-1C became the ‘civilian satellite with highest spatial resolution (ability to discriminate features)’ spoke highly about India’s growing prowess in space.Foreign media spoke of the Indian space programme’s ‘success on a shoestring’.
In the same decade, India was confident enough to lease the communications transponders of its INSAT-2E satellite to the famed INTELSAT.The first decade of the new millennium further expanded the Indian satellite programme with the successful launch and recovery of Space Capsule Recovery experiment (SRE-1) and the launch of Chandrayaan-1, India’s maiden endeavour to explore the Moon. The conclusive discovery of water on the Moon by Chandrayaan-1 as it orbited that heavenly body was widely hailed as a pathbreaking discovery.
In the subsequent decade, India successfully stepped into the satellite navigation domain with the launch and operationalisation of ‘Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC)’. The successful exploration of Mars using its Mangalyaan spacecraft that enabled India to become the first country that scored one hundred per cent success in its very maiden mission to explore Mars, itself was yet another conspicuous revelation.In this decade, the monumental success of Chandrayaan-3 in becoming the first spacecraft to land in the south polar region of the Moon signified India’s present space capabilities.
So was the success of Aditya-L1 which is performing round the clock solar observation from its distant (1.5 million kilometre) orbital home.The future beckonsLater in this decade, India is planning to take up extremely challenging missions including the one to bring back lunar rock and soil samples (Chandrayaan-4), jointly explore the lunar polar area with Japan (Chandrayaan-5) and send a spacecraft to the veiled next door planetary neighbour Venus (Shukrayaan).
The bold decision to undertake these missions reminds us of the solid foundation laid by Aryabhata to the Indian satellite programme and the unique ability of the man who skilfully laid that foundation – Prof U R Rao..
