Another launch success for India
The competition heats up: Using its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle rocket (PSLV) India successfully launched a French Earth-observation satellite on Monday.
The PSLV continues to be a very reliable commercial rocket for India’s government. That this launch was also witnessed by India’s new prime minister Narendri Modi — who also endorsed his country’s space effort in a public tweet — suggests that India’s space effort has a very bright future.
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The competition heats up: Using its Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle rocket (PSLV) India successfully launched a French Earth-observation satellite on Monday.
The PSLV continues to be a very reliable commercial rocket for India’s government. That this launch was also witnessed by India’s new prime minister Narendri Modi — who also endorsed his country’s space effort in a public tweet — suggests that India’s space effort has a very bright future.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
An Indian friend in aerospace tells me that he is very optimistic for the future of India’s space program, politically and technically. The second space agency ever to launch a probe to Mars orbit, if that works out later this year. The Japanese have failed (to Mars, but they’ve succeeded to asteroids further away). The Chinese failed while piggybacking on a Russian mission. The Europeans piggybacked the Huygens lander on a NASA interplanetary spacecraft. Now ISRO is going to Mars by themselves.
I think it proves that future space travel will be diverse, not cold war bi-polar.
Though I completely agree with you about the bright future of India’s space program, I must correct you. They will not be the second nation to fly a probe successfully to Mars’ orbit, should their Mars Orbiter Mission successfully gain orbit. Europe’s Mars Express orbiter has been circling Mars for years, taking excellent images and gathering tons of new data.