Re: India launches educational satellite

From: habshi (habshi_at_anony.net)
Date: 09/21/04 

Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 13:24:46 GMT

        Why dont we send animals and then condemned criminals who are waiting to die anyway to see
if they survive radiation- volunteers of course ?

SOARING SUCCESS: The GSLV-F04 on its flawless flight after liftoff from the SHAR range on Monday. --
Photo: Vino John

SRIHARIKOTA, SEPT. 20. India once again demonstrated that it is a world leader in space when its
Geo-Synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-FO1) raced into the sky from the spaceport at
Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, at 4.01 p.m. today and put EDUSAT in a perfect orbit 17 minutes later.

This is the third successful flight for the GSLV after the earlier successful flights from the
Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota in April 2001 and May 2003. For the Indian Space Research
Organisation (ISRO), this is the 10th successful flight in a row.

The 1,950-kg EDUSAT is the heaviest satellite launched so far by ISRO. EDUSAT is India's first
exclusive satellite for educational services.

`Excellent mission'

This is the first operational flight of the GSLV. The previous two GSLV flights were developmental
missions. G. Madhavan Nair, Chairman, ISRO, called it an "excellent" mission. "We did not have any
hold at all. The entire launch sequence went on as planned. The trajectory was unbelievably good."

The success was all the more sweeter because heavy rains and thunder clouds threatened to disrupt
the launch. There was lightning too. "We thought we should postpone the launch," Mr. Nair said. But
using a radar that ISRO had developed and a balloon launch for measuring the height of the cloud and
the wind velocity, and thereby redesigning the trajectory of the flight, ISRO decided at 8.30 a.m.
today to go ahead. And the countdown proceeded without any hitch.

The GSLV-FO1 lifted off on the dot at 4.01 p.m., and the giant vehicle soaring into the sky on top
of balls of orange flames. The three stages of the vehicle ignited on schedule and they jettisoned
with clockwork precision. Seventeen minutes after the lift-off, the third cryogenic stage injected
EDUSAT into orbit at a velocity of 37,000 km an hour. It went into a perfect geo-synchronous
transfer orbit with an apogee of 35,985 km and a perigee of 180.54 km.

EDUSAT would revolutionise distance education. From a television studio, a teacher can teach any
subject, and if schools/colleges have reception facilities, they can simultaneously listen to him.

Editorial on Page 8
The successful launch of the GSLV from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota also shows that
ISRO has put behind it the grievous accident at a solid propellant facility that claimed several
lives in February this year. ISRO now faces new endeavours and challenges. The Second Launch Pad,
which has been executed by industry on a turnkey basis, is getting ready and is likely to be
commissioned soon. Launch vehicles will be integrated in a separated building, instead of right at
the pad as at present, and then moved to the launch pad just before launch. With the launch pad
occupied only for a short period of time, ISRO will be able to carry out more launches from
Sriharikota. While the present GSLV flew with a Russian-made cryogenic engine and stage, the
development of the indigenous equivalent is nearing completion. In addition, ISRO is developing the
GSLV Mark-III, which will have one and a half times the payload capability of the present GSLV. For
the Mark-III, ISRO will need to develop a giant solid propellant booster as well as a more powerful
cryogenic engine. ISRO hopes to have the GSLV Mark-III ready before the end of this decade.

For all its capabilities, ISRO is yet to break into the world market for building satellites and for
launch services. Cumbersome U.S. export control regulations, which treat satellites and satellite
components as armaments, pose a major hurdle. ISRO has clearly been deprived of satellite launch
contracts as a result of these regulations. One can only hope that the partnership Boeing and ISRO
are trying to forge for building satellites — Boeing needed a licence from the U.S. Government just
to talk to ISRO and exchange technical information — will come to fruition. The latest relaxation in
U.S. export licensing policies that has been announced appears to remove only ISRO Headquarters from
the U.S. Department of Commerce's Entity List; several ISRO units are still on the list. There is a
presumption of denial of export licences for dual-use high technology items to organisations on the
Entity List. Both countries must address these issues meaningfully.