The Legacy of the Indian Space Research Organisation
50 Years of Excellence and Innovation
The year was 1963.
A sleepy little fishing town named after a flowering herb, there was not much that differentiated this one from other settlements nearby.
Until they came.
Until they came, with a rocket on a rickety bicycle and a million dreams in their hearts, to sow the seeds for a lasting legacy of space exploration that the world had never seen before.
Thumba was not a generic south Indian village anymore: it was home to India’s first rocket launch, and many subsequent ones too. History had been made.
The launch of the Chandrayaan-2 is yet another milestone in the history of the Indian Space Research Organisation. Despite having limited resources in comparison to many other similar institutions elsewhere in the world, the ISRO has time and again proved that it is an elite organisation that can pull off spectacular feats.
Currently headquartered at Bengaluru, Karnataka with centres all over India, ISRO continues to be a leading pioneer in the domain. Let us take some time to look back at some of the major missions carried out over the course of its 50 years of existence.
ARYABHATA
A 360-kilogram bundle of electronics equipment and sheer toil, Aryabhata reserves its place in history as India’s first ever satellite. Launched on April 19, 1975 by the Soviet Kosmos-3M rocket from the Volgograd launch station in Russia, the satellite went on to be a pioneer in the scenario of Indian space exploration, just like its namesake had been.
The mission was used to conduct experiments in x-ray astronomy and solar physics during the six months it was active for.
BHASKARA-1
BHASKARA-1 was the first ever experimental remote sensing satellite built in India.
The images from the cameras onboard were used in the field of hydrology and forestry and the scientific data recorded was also used in oceanographic studies, breaking the stereotype that satellites were meant only for space studies.
The mission was launched on June 7, 1979, and lasted for a year.
APPLE
The Ariane Passenger Payload Experiment (APPLE) was ISRO’s first indigenous experimental communication satellite.
It was designed and built in just 2 years with limited infrastructure.
APPLE was used to carry out extensive experiments on time, frequency and code division multiple access systems as well as radio networking.
This mission was launched on June 19, 1981, and lasted for two years.
OCEANSAT
Launched on May 26, 1999, OCEANSAT was the first satellite built primarily for ocean applications. The satellite contained an Ocean Colour Monitor (OCM) and a Multi-frequency Scanning Microwave Radiometer used for oceanographic studies, remaining in service for over eleven years.
KALPANA-1
Named after the late Dr Kalpana Chawla, this satellite was the first in a series built by the ISRO exclusively for meteorological missions. This mission was launched on 12 September 2002 and lasted for seven years.
EDUSAT
GSAT-3, also known as EDUSAT, is meant for the purpose of facilitating distance education. With satellite-based two-way communication for delivering educational material, this mission truly took learning to every nook of the country.
CARTOSAT-1
This was the first Indian remote sensing satellite capable of producing stereo imaging. The data recorded during its five-year tenure in space was used for mapping applications.
CHANDRAYAAN-1
Chandrayaan-1 is one of the greatest success stories in India’s history of space exploration which put ISRO in the elite league among other top global space organisations.
This was India’s first mission to the Moon and was launched on October 22, 2008, from the SDSC SHAR, Sriharikota in just one attempt, a rare feat. The spacecraft recorded the chemical, mineralogical and photo-geological mapping of the lunar surface and offered numerous breakthrough insights on the Moon’s characteristics.
ANUSAT
The Anna University Satellite (ANUSAT) is the first student-built satellite under ISRO’s guidance. This satellite marked a new era where university students are empowered to collaborate and develop satellites which are then launched by the space agency.
THE MARS ORBITER MISSION
Also referred to as the ‘Mangalyaan’, this is ISRO’s greatest achievement till date and arguably one of the greatest by any space organisation worldwide. Incredibly, the entirety of Mangalyaan’s mission cost just 4.5 billion rupees or $74 million, making it just 11% the cost of NASA’s own Mars Mission.
To put things into context, no other country had ever succeeded in their first attempt to send an orbiter to Mars.
Five solar-powered instruments aboard Mangalyaan gather data to understand the working of Martian weather systems, which can help understand what happened to the large quantity of water to believed to have existed on the planet.
CHANDRAYAAN-2
Coming to the latest addition to ISRO’s hall of fame, Chandrayaan-2 is India’s second mission to the moon after Chandrayaan-1, scheduled to be launched in mid-July. It will attempt to land a rover and a lander between the Manzenus C and Simpelius N craters of the Moon.
If successful, Chandrayaan-2 will be the second ever mission to successfully land a rover near the lunar South Pole. The data recorded will include scientific information on lunar topography, mineralogy and elemental abundance, as well as key insights about the lunar exosphere and signatures of water-ice. This will help scientists better understand our nearest neighbour’s surface.
A ringing testimony to what stellar dreams can do, the Indian Space Research Organisation’s journey has been one fraught not just with spectacular successes, but heart-wrenching failures too. But even after all these years of ups and downs, the men and women who built this towering establishment brick-by-brick have never ever given up on one thing: the vision that Thumba’s first rocket engineers concocted for the future of science, specifically space exploration, in India. And it is this perseverance and resourcefulness that sets the ISRO apart.
Editorial Note
This article was written in collaboration with Nivetha Balu of the Probe content team.
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