Friday, April 16, 2010

India space program suffers setback as GSLV D3 launch fails

ISRO GSLV D3: India space program suffers setback as GSLV D3 launch fails. India has been trying to be independent when t came to space technology. It made a great statement less than two years ago when it sent Chandrayan, India's first moon mission.
But yesterday when India believed that it had overcome bottlenecks to be on top of the world in space technology, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) suffered a major loss when its GSLV-D3 failed to lift.

India's dream to become sixth nation to successfully deploy cryogenic technology crashed down when Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-D3) carrying a GSAT4 and GAGAN satellite exploded from the Satish Dhawan space center at Sriharikota on Thursday.

The GSLV-D3 was to put the satellites into orbit, but signals stopped coming from the rocket within 505 seconds of its launch. The rocket had managed to reach 60 km height above sea level before it changed its designated path and crashed into the Bay of Bengal.
Dr. K. Radhakrishnan, chairman of Indian Space Research Organization said: "We are not sure whether the main cryogenic engine did ignite. We have to confirm after analyzing the data which is expected to take two or three days." This was his maiden launch as the head of ISRO and the second GSLV launch to fail in the past six instances. Radhakrishnan said that the launch of next GSLV with Indian made cryogenic engine would take place again within a year after errors are resolved.

This was the first launch using Indian made cryogenic engine, after India failed to import the technology from Russia in 1992, as US opposed the deal.

However, if the mission had been successful then India would have joined the group of countries to deploy cryogenic technology, in addition to US, Russia, China, France and Japan.
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Kind Regards;
VK Pandey

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