Another launch success for India
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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.
For many reasons, mostly political but partly ethical, I do not use Google, Facebook, Twitter. They practice corrupt business policies, while targeting conservative websites for censoring, facts repeatedly confirmed by news stories and by my sense that Facebook has taken action to prevent my readers from recommending Behind the Black to their friends.
Thus, I must have your direct support to keep this webpage alive. Not only does the money pay the bills, it gives me the freedom to speak honestly about science and culture, instead of being forced to write it as others demand.
Please consider donating by giving either a one-time contribution or a regular subscription, as outlined in the tip jar below.
Regular readers can support Behind The Black with a contribution via paypal:
If Paypal doesn't work for you, you can support Behind The Black directly by sending your donation by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman, 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. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
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.
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.