Rediff On The NeT: Unreasonable Russian demands propelled PSLV programme

Unreasonable Russian demands propelled PSLV programme

The Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle has become operational just after two successful developmental flights, thanks to some hard Russian bargaining in launching Indian remote-sensing satellites.

Unperturbed by the abortive first developmental flight PSLV-D1, ISRO scientists picked up the gauntlet thrown at them during the December 1995 launch of the vital IRC-1C satellite from Baikanour.

After the satellite was shipped to Baikanour, the Russians demanded more funds to launch the Indian satellite with their new Molniya rocket.

ISRO's response to the challenge resulted in the phenomenally fast operationalisation of the PSLV series in less than 15 months. The PSLV's second and third developmental flights on October 15, 1994, and March 21, 1996, were total success.

In fact, all the systems of the PSLV-D1, launched on October 20, 1993, had performed creditably, but the vehicle failed to inject the IRS-1E satellite into the intended polar orbit.

The 44-metre-tall, 280-tonne vehicle, the biggest built by ISRO till then, had plunged into the Bay of Bengal, just 700 seconds after lift-off.

This was primarily due to a software error in the pitch control loop of the onboard guidance and control processor.

The failure of the first mission was bitter, but ISRO scientists were not crestfallen. Learning their lessons from the failure, they worked on the second developmental flight PSLV-D2 which flawlessly deployed the IRS-P2 into polar sun-synchronous orbit at a height of 825 km.

The third developmental flight PSL-D3 was a grand success. It placed in orbit the 930 kg IRS-P3, signalling to the world that India was on the threshold of the PSLV vehicle operationalisation.

Many of the complex technologies mastered in the developmental flights are directly going into the Geostationary Launch Vehicle, to be launched next year. In this mission, a 2,500-kg indigenous telecommunication satellite would be put in orbit at 36,000 km above the earth.

This would make India self-reliant in its ambitious space programme.

UNI

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