ISRO A PERSONAL HISTORY RAMABHADRAN ARAVAMUDAN is an award-winning senior scientist who has been associated with the Indian space programme from its very inception. He has served as the director of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota and of the ISRO Satellite Centre, Bengaluru. GITA ARAVAMUDAN is a veteran journalist and author with several books and hundreds of articles to her credit. ISRO A PERSONAL HISTORY R. ARAVAMUDAN WITH GITA ARAVAMUDAN HarperCollins Publishers India First published in India in 2017 by HarperCollins Publishers India Copyright © R. Aravamudan and Gita Aravamudan 2017 P-ISBN: 978-93-5264-363-9 E-ISBN: 978-93-5264-364-6 246 8 10975 3 1 R. Aravamudan and Gita Aravamudan assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work. The views and opinions expressed in this book are the authors' own and the facts are as reported by them, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. HarperCollins Publishers A-75, Sector 57, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201301, India 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF, United Kingdom Hazelton Lanes, 55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900, Toronto, Ontario M5R 3L2 and 1995 Markham Road, Scarborough, Ontario M1B 5M8, Canada 25 Ryde Road, Pymble, Sydney, NSW 2073, Australia 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007, USA Typeset in 11.5/15.1 Adobe Garamond at Manipal Digital Systems, Manipal Printed and bound at Thomson Press (India) Ltd To all my colleagues at ISRO, present, past andfuture, my co-travellers on India's incredible journey into space Contents Prologue ix 1 The Beginning 1 2 Those Were the Days 22 3 TERLS: The International Launch Station 35 4 Finding Our Feet — and Wings 49 5 Early Learning Experiences from Around the World 64 6 The Growing Years 85 7 Sarabhai 101 8 Turbulent Times 116 9 Streamlining 132 10 SLV: Our First Homegrown Launch Vehicle 141 11 ASLV: Hurdling through to Success 148 12 Sultan of SHAR 159 13 Growing Pains 166 Vlll CONTENTS 14 The Story of GSLV 175 15 From Rockets to Satellites 190 16 Using Space Technology 203 17 The Way We Work 208 Epilogue 217 Annexure 1 219 Milestones 219 Annexure 2 231 Indian Spacecraft 231 Annexure 3 234 Size of Indian Launchers 264 Acknowledgements 235 Index 237