The Hindu : National : Mission nostalgia for Kalam now

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, May 04, 2005

National

National

Mission nostalgia for Kalam now

T.S. Subramanian

CHENNAI: President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, a rocket engineer himself, will inaugurate on Wednesday the second launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota in Andhra Pradesh. He will also watch from the Mission Control Centre the lift-off of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C6) from the launch pad on Thursday morning.

The second launch pad is a permanent building, called Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), where different types of launch vehicles could be integrated vertically. The VAB is 82 metres tall and is fully air-conditioned. It is reportedly the tallest building on the east coast.

It will be a nostalgic event for Mr. Kalam when he sits as President in the Mission Control Centre that will plot the path of the PSLV-C6 and the injection of two satellites into orbit. On August 10, 1979, he sat in a smaller Mission Control Centre as the project director of SLV-3. He was then an employee of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO). That was the first flight of SLV-3 but it failed because the nitric acid from the solenoid valve leaked out. The vehicle fell into the Bay of Bengal. Mr. Kalam was again the project director of the next SLV-3 flight on July 18, 1980 from Sriharikota. That flight was "a fantastic success" and it propelled India into the exclusive space club of five _ the U.S., the then Soviet Union, China, Japan and France. The July 18, 1980 flight put the Rohini satellite, weighing 35 kg, into orbit. The SLV-3 was 22 metres tall and weighed 17 tonnes. The PSLV-C6 is 44 metres tall and weighs 295 tonnes. CARTOSAT at 1,560 kg will be the heaviest remote-sensing satellite to be deployed by the PSLV. Ironically, HAMSAT, which weighs 43 kg, is now classified as a micro-satellite.

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