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Journalism of Courage
WHEN the polar satellite launch vehicle PSLV hit its trajectory with 8220;textbook precision8221; on Wednesday, ISRO began celebrating not the event itself but what it promised 8212; the wherewithal for a moon mission in 2008 and potentially, to put an Indian on the moon in eight years from now. As ISRO put it, in the age of space travel, Indians will not have to buy their tickets on a foreign spacecraft.
At one go, it dispelled the sense of failure lurking since last summer when the geo-stationary launch vehicle GSLV headed straight to the bottom of the sea within a minute of take off besides assuring that India was independently on its way to acquiring knowhow on space technology.
The PSLV rocket will place two satellites in orbit, milestones by themselves, but also the first step of a fully-indigenous moon mission. A 8220;capsule8221; on board will hopefully help realise India8217;s dreams of taking an Indian in space using Indian rockets launched from Indian soil while the other satellite watches the Earth like never before.
Passing the capsule test
The 550-kg capsule is, in effect, ISRO8217;s first test 8212; if it can bring back a capsule successfully, maybe it can bring back a cosmonaut too. This giant black ceramic tile-lined spindle is a forerunner of the sort of capsule that India hopes to use to bring back humans when manned missions start.
As of now, the satellite called the Space Capsule Recovery Experiment SRE-1, will conduct two materials science experiments, essentially growing crystals in zero gravity. The climax for the Rs 25-crore equipment, however, will be when it returns to the earth8217;s surface on January 22, 2007.
But why is recovering the capsule in one piece such a big deal?
The SRE-1 is orbiting the Earth at an altitude of more than 600 kilometres and hurtling at a speed of 8.04 kilometres per second in the near vacuum of the space environment. Two days before its touchdown in the warm waters of the Bay of Bengal, the capsule will be slowed down and brought back into the earth8217;s atmosphere and then guided to a specified location 140 km east of Sriharikota. When the capsule enters the earth8217;s atmosphere, the friction will heat its outer surface to almost 2,000 degrees centigrade, 200 times the boiling point of water. Yet, the innards of the capsule will remain at a sylvan 40 degrees centigrade. Keeping the steel-ripping heat away will be the small 6-inch-by-6-inch black tiles that line the outer surface of the capsule.
Custom-made by Indian scientists, Nair says this proprietary material is a technology two decades ahead as far as quality goes in comparison to what the Americans use on the Space Shuttle. For the capsule to hit the water and not be dashed into pieces, it will be slowed down by parachutes and will touch down at a relatively mild speed of 12 metres per second.
Gaining knowhow
Till date, only Russia, America and China have mastered the navigation technology to bring back a satellite from outer space. This is really the first step towards a manned space flight since there is no way you can send a human up in space without having fully mastered the technology of safely bringing her back to Earth.
Not for any sum of money will any country ever part with this knowhow and each space-faring nation has to re-invent the wheel in this high technology frontier. Nair says ISRO is all for international cooperation, but technology development related to travel back and forth from outer space has to be mastered locally. 8220;After all, 20 years from now when space travel is likely to become mundane like airlines travel, we don8217;t want to be buying travel tickets on others people8217;s space vehicles.8221;
The recovery experiment when successful will be the first giant leap India will make after having placed its first big satellite in orbit way back in 1994. It will also give the ISRO budget a talking point 8212; it will bargain with the government for anything between Rs 10,000 crore and 16,000 crore for to put in place a manned mission. 8220;Whenever the approval comes,8221; says Nair, 8220;ISRO is confident of putting an Indian in space eight years hence.8221;
Precision eyes in space
The PSLV isn8217;t all about the moon, though. With the other element it carries, the Cartosat, the ISRO will do justice to its Rs 3,100-crore budget by fulfilling its current national priorities. The Rs 160-crore Cartosat-2 is a 8220;highly agile8221; single camera remote sensing platform which, from its 630-km altitude, can distinguish objects less than a metre apart. In effect, that8217;s a camera that when placed in New Delhi can photograph two people standing one metre apart as far away as Lucknow. The stated purpose of the satellite is to help India prepare better maps, which will then help in better urban planning and in implementing futuristic projects like the inter-linking of rivers.
The unstated purpose: the 680 kg, five-year life span satellite which can change orbit at command can 8220;photograph objects with the clarity of aerial photography without over flying and risking airplanes in enemy territory8221;.
The only other civilian satellite with matching capabilities is the American Quickbird satellite, which has a 63-cm resolution.
Since the launch, tracking stations in eight different locations in the world have reported a healthy day for the satellites launched into the 635-km polar synchronous orbit. 8220;We expect to switch on the Cartsosat-2 camera for a trial run on Friday. The Space Recovery capsule Experiment SRE-1 is in the same orbit and doing fine,8217;8217; ISRO spokesperson S Krishnamurthy said. Cartsosat-2 is being monitored through a network of stations at Bangalore, Lucknow, Mauritius, Bearslake in Russia, Biak in Indonesia and with the support of Svalbard ground station in Sweden. The additional ground station monitors are at Saskatoon in Canada and Transo in Norway.
Two days before being brought down to earth, 140 km east of Sriharikota, the SRE-1 will change orbit. It will subsequently reorient itself for a return to earth, fire a deboost rocket and enter earth8217;s atmosphere. It will be guided down into the Bay of Bengal 140 km east of Sriharikota.
If all goes well, a rocket similar to the PSLV will undertake India8217;s US 100 million maiden mission to the moon. In March-April 2008, the advanced PSLV rocket will lift off from Sriharikota carrying Chandrayaan-1, a robotic two-year mission to map the moon8217;s resources. And hopefully, trace the footprints for a manned mission.
The PSLV launch, which Nair described as having 8220;achieved perfection8221;, had a 0.1 per cent error margin. That8217;s the 0.1 per cent ISRO will have to look out for.
