October,4: It was too good to last. After all the euphoria over the successful PSLV launch, and a lot of appreciation of the `Kasturirangan magic', the launch vehicle has failed to put the remote-sensing satellite in the correct orbital slot. The Indian space programme seems to be caught in a remarkable run of bad luck because simultaneously, it is faced with the very nightmare that Arthur C. Clarke had scripted for 2001, a Space Odyssey. INSAT-2D has lost contact with earth and may have to be decommissioned. Indian space science has had its bad moments before. In November 1989, INSAT-1C had to be abandoned less than a year and a half after it was launched from Kouru because of a similar problem. And in a disaster that was then taken as a sign that Indians were never intended to be a spacefaring race, an earlier PSLV test launch ended up in the ocean less than 200 seconds after it took to the air.But the mishaps of the past were not half as damaging as the current crisis may turn out to be. Those were the teething troubles that any fledgling space programme could expect to be faced with. But this particular PSLV launch, the last in the series, was supposed to be a rite of passage. With a completely successful launch, India would have become one of the small handful of nations with full satellite launch capability. This time, the whole world was watching, and newspapers everywhere carried pictures of the launch on their front pages. The news that the IRS satellite's life span has been curtailed by a flawed launch is also being transmitted worldwide, and its import is going through loud and clear to several communications firms which were interested in launching their space platforms from Sriharikota. They include Teledesic, which promises to be the biggest comsat network in space, offering all communications services bundled into one cable, and Iridium, which has already launched five of the satellites of its network. Taking advantage of government subsidies, Indian aerospace is in a position to grab a large share of the projected $30 billion global market in comsat launch facilities with very competitive pricing. The remote sensing data that the industry already distributes through the US-based EOSAT is the cheapest in the world. Sriharikota's launch facilities too could have been the cheapest, and ISRO had decided to upgrade its pad capability to four launches per year in anticipation of a boom. However, that decision appears to be premature now. Few communications companies will base a business plan on launches from SHAR when they are uncertain about the possibilities of success. The insurance companies will be wary, too. And anyway, in the event of a failure which can be directly imputed to Indian scientists, will the government be in a position to pay steep penalty fees? The Indian space industry is at a watershed, poised to enter the global market. But before it can do that, it has to make a reputation for itself. It has to convince the satellite industry majors that it is capable of putting satellites in the right place at the right time. Customers are not merely price-sensitive when they are buying an expensive service. They are also sensitive to the reliability of that service. In space, there is no room for error.
