ISRO Commemorates 40^th Anniversary of
First Sounding Rocket Launch

It was on November 21,1963, that a Nike-Apache rocket roared into the skies over Thumba that heralded the beginning of the Indian space programme. In the four decades since then, more than 3000 sounding rockets have been flown for various scientific experiments. More important is that India has taken significant strides in other areas of space technology as well bringing several benefits to the nation.

The Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram, which grew around the Thumba Equatorial Rocket Launching Station, commemorated the 40 th anniversary of the first sounding rocket launch on November 21, 2003. Mr G Madhavan Nair, Chairman, ISRO inaugurated the celebration. Several eminent space personalities, who were associated with the Indian space programme in its early stages of evolution, shared their reminiscences. There was a re-enacting of the first sounding rocket launch with the flight of a RH-200 rocket in the afternoon.

Addressing the gathering over telephone from New Delhi, the President of India, Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, urged the scientists to see how space technology could be used to realise the vision of making India a developed country by 2020.

Mr Madhavan Nair, Chairman, ISRO inaugurating the celebration

Mr R Aravamudan, Hon. Advisor, ISRO, who was associated with the Indian space programme even before the first sounding rocket was launched from India, delivered the Keynote Address during the VSSC Celebration.

Space India reproduces Mr Aravamudan's address:

 

A Space Saga - The Thumba Years
Keynote Address by Mr R Aravamudan

Forty years in the life of a human being marks the attainment of optimal mental and physical capacity and emotional maturity. Socially, by the time one is forty, one is accepted as a respectable member of the community and looked upon to provide leadership. The birth and growth of ISRO in the past forty years is analogous to this.

Mr Aravamudan & Mr Abdul Kalam toiling to assemble a sounding rocket payload

ISRO has seen distinct phases of development in these four decades. The first decade (1963 - 73), which I would call the Vikram Sarabhai decade, was one of vision, dreams and hopes. This period saw the visualisation of the space profile, the sowing of the seeds of programmes, the harnessing of resources and the rallying of the key manpower.

The second decade (1973-1983) has been the decade of the consolidation of the programmes. I would call it the decade of Satish Dhawan. Projects were delineated, government approvals were obtained and the end users of the applications were involved. Early programmes like the SLV, Aryabhata and Bhaskara satellite launches and application programmes like the SITE came to fruition. Foundations were laid for the operational launch vehicle and satellite projects.

The third decade (1983-1993), which was the U R Rao decade, saw peak activity in terms of the development of the subsystems and components of launch vehicles, spacecraft and ground segments. Some operational satellites were established in the geosynchronous and low earth orbits. Regular communications and remote sensing operational services to the nation were established. Experimental launchings of the Indian launch vehicles yielded data on their performance, validating some design elements and revealing inadequacies in a few others, which were subsequently rectified. This was a rich learning phase in our ambitious future programmes.