India’s space programme is moving forward at a rapid pace and 2013 alone will see Isro launch 12 missions. The most significant of these will be the Mars Orbiter Mission expected to start in October 2013.
Giving a detailed account of India’s space journey, Isro chairman K. Radhakrishnan pointed out in the course of a public lecture at the Indian National Science Academy that the launch is likely to take place in October.
“The sheer distance from Earth to Mars is between 55 to 400 million kms.”
“We have to look at the opportunity which comes once in 26 months when the distance is the least… otherwise the next one will come in either 2016 or 2018,” he said.
Isro’s heaviest rocket, the GSLV-Mk 111 is also expected to take off in 2014 on an experimental flight whose later versions could be used to send humans on space missions.
And despite failure of its GSLV’s due to technical snags, it plans to go push ahead with its Chandrayaan 2 in 2014 by using an indigenous cryogenic engine.
For its Mars flight, Isro is falling back on its old war horse, the PSLV-XL rocket for the launch.
Mr Radhakrishnan said, “There is a communication delay that can take up to 20 minutes. If we give a command, we will have to give it a plus of 40 minutes and are therefore building up an autonomy for the satellite to correct itself,” for the Mars flight. Radkhakrishnan was upfront about the failure of the successive failure of the GSLVs but expected these to be ironed out in due course.
The mainstay of the GSLV-Mk III would be to put in orbit communication satellites weighing between four and five tonnes, thus packing more transponders per launch.
This will also be a first time that Isro scientists would undertake an experimental flight of a launch GSLV Mk 111 which would fall into the sea after reaching a height of 120 km.
“Its flight is being simulated using computers but not all texts can carried out on the ground,” GSLV-Mk III’s project director S. Somnath said.