Indian scientists created space history by successfully delivering 10 satellites in a single launch vehicle. The team of scientists at the Indian Space Research Organisation under the leadership of Dr. Madhavan Nair achieved this feat on April 29. Sadly, neither the parliament, the political parties or the leaders at the helm were heard congratulating the scientists. India'sPolar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) placed two Indian and eight foreign satellites into their orbits some 600 km above earth, rocketing India into space history. The payload weighed 820 kg. The closest to the Indian attempt had been a Russian launch last year, with a payload of mere 295 kg. The ISRO officials pointed out that a similar attempt by NASA last year had failed. The rocket launcher standing 44 m tall and weighing 230 tonnes is estimated to have cost 17.4 million dollars.
The 50-hour countdown launched from Saturday climaxed when all the satellites were placed into their orbits on Monday morning without a single deviation from the path. Other than the two Indian satellites, it delivered eight nanosatellites from developed countries like Canada, Japan, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands. The primary work of these is to provide data for scientific work in universities and laboratories.
With this successful launch the scientists would now entirely concentrate on the Chandrayaan-1 mission to moon, which is expected to be fulfilled in the third quarter of the year. A 500 kg satellite would be sent on an exploratory mission for terrain mapping and surface mapping. Except a couple of newspapers, none of the national dailies flashed this ISRO history in the front pages of their papers some even ignoring it totally.
(FOC)
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