The competition heats up: India’s space agency ISRO has scheduled the test flight of its half scale space plane prototype for May 23.
The competition heats up: India has successfully launched its seventh home-built GPS satellite, completing their GPS constellation.
The seven first-generation satellites have been launched over a three-year period, starting with the deployment of IRNSS-1A in July 2013. ISRO has launched all of the satellites itself using the PSLV rocket. The flight number for Thursday’s launch was PSLV C33, which saw the vehicle fly in its most powerful configuration, the PSLV-XL. This version of the PSLV was introduced in October 2008 with the launch of the Chandrayaan-1 lunar probe, and features more powerful solid rocket boosters than the standard PSLV, increasing the amount of payload it can carry into orbit.
Meanwhile, they are gearing up for the first test flight of the engineering prototype of their reusuable spaceplane.
This op-ed provides a revealing outline of how the political tensions in Islamic Pakistan have damaged efforts by India to work together on a satellite project.
In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced India’s decision to develop (and gift) a satellite to benefit all SAARC member countries [South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation] in different fields like weather data exchanges, disaster management, telecommunication and tele-medicine. The work on this satellite has already begun at the Indian Space research Organisation (ISRO), and the satellite is expected to be launched by the end of 2016. After remaining indecisive about this project for long, Pakistan has finally decided to opt out of the SAARC satellite project. Now, India would launch this satellite not as a satellite for SAARC, but as a South Asia satellite.
Pakistan’s decision may not be totally surprising given the current chill in the India-Pakistan relationship. The initial discussions on this project were progressing in a constructive fashion with Pakistan. However, Pakistan subsequently made a technical and financial help offer to India for the construction of the satellite. This was not accepted by India, which could be one of the main reasons for Pakistan opting out of this project. Obviously, Pakistan has missed an opportunity to develop ‘orbital cooperation’ with India in spite of having ‘terrestrial confrontation’.
The article, describing other cooperative efforts by India, including working with Russia and China to link the GPS systems of the three countries. once again indicates to me that India as a country is successfully becoming a first world nation.
The competition heats up: ISRO, India’s space agency, this week announced plans to conduct its first test flight of its half-scale prototype reusable launch vehicle in May.
The RLV, is a scaled-down prototype (some 21.3 feet in length or 6.5 meters) of a future uncrewed single-stage reusable spaceplane, known as Avatar, that is being designed by the ISRO. The May mission will be a technology demonstrator (RLV-TD) to test powered cruise flight, autonomous landing and hypersonic flight using an air-breathing propulsion system. The spacecraft, which resembles a small winged aircraft, will be launched from the first launchpad of the Satish Dhawan Space Centre to an altitude of 43 miles (70 km) atop a two-stage Rohini sounding rocket and then released. It will re-enter the atmosphere and travel back to Earth in a controlled descent, to be recovered from the Bay of Bengal. [emphasis mine]
This vehicle is kind of Inida’s version of the Air Force’s X-37B, except that it is also testing a hypersonic scramjet engine, a cutting edge design that the U.S. has barely been able to fly successfully. Should they succeed, it will place them smack dab in the middle of the elite club of space-faring nations.
India today signed an agreement with the National Science Foundation to build its own LIGO gravitational wave detector
This deal, combined with the possibility that TMT might move to India as well, suggests that India is about to move aggressively from the Third World to the First. And the reason, after decades of wallowing in poverty and failure, is that they finally abandoned in the late 1990s the Soviet models of socialism and communism and embraced private enterprise and capitalism, ideas championed by the United States.
If only some modern Americans would do the same.
Killing competition: The American launch industry as well as the FAA regulators are in agreement that a 2005 law that limits American small satellite companies from using foreign launch companies should remain in place.
The CSLA, dating from 2005, is the U.S. government’s way of protecting the seemingly forever-nascent U.S. small-satellite launch industry from competing with government-controlled foreign launchers for U.S. business. It seeks to oblige non-U.S. rocket providers to sign a CSLA that, for all intents and purposes, sets U.S. commercial launch prices as the world minimum for government-owned non-U.S. launch providers.
The rationale is that these non-U.S. launchers, not bound by the constraints of profit and loss – but hungry for hard-currency export earnings – will undercut commercial U.S. companies’ launch prices and keep them from gaining market traction.
India’s launch rockets, for example, are designed and built by India’s space agency ISRO, and are backed not by private funds but by government money. The fear is that India could subsidize its rockets so that the price could always be kept below what any American company could charge.
The truth, however, is that competition and innovation, here in the U.S., has so successful undercut foreign prices that no amount of subsidies can hope to compete. Those foreign companies are now scrambling to actually redesign their rockets to lower their costs and thus their prices, rather than asking for more handouts from their governments. This law should be repealed.
India is now a second candidate location to replace Hawaii for the Thirty Meter Telescope.
Hanle in Ladakh has been short-listed as a prospective site by the TMT board following major hurdles in Mauna Kea, Hawaii – the first choice for the project. An international team is expected to visit Ladakh in a couple of months. … India is already building edge sensors, actuators and system support support assemblies, besides contributing to the software of TMT. India is expected to invest $212 million in the project.
Not only is India contributing technology and money to the telescope, institutes in the country are also participating in the consortium.
Two major scientific institutions – the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) Bengaluru and the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune – along with two government departments having working on the project since 2013. The department of science and technology (DST) and the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) are the government partners, while IIA is the nodal agency.
I think the odds continue to increase that TMT will abandon Hawaii, especially since the state government there continues to drag its feet.
The competition heats up: India has successfully launched the sixth satellite in its own GPS constellation. using its PSLV rocket.
They will complete the GPS constellation with a seventh satellite launch in April. The system however is already functioning, as it only needs a minimum of four satellites to work. Unlike the U.S. 24 satellite system, which is designed to be global, India’s system is regional with its focus centered over India itself. This is why they do not need as many satellites for it to function effectively.
In its new budget approved by India’s government the country’s space agency ISRO was the only science agency to get a significant budget increase, approximately 7.3%.
In the short run this is good, as ISRO has been using its funds wisely and accomplishing a lot for a little, while trying to encourage private development in India’s aerospace industry. In the long run, however, this will not be good, as government agencies always grow more than they should while sucking the innovation and creativity from the private sector. This is what NASA did in the U.S.
Hopefully, India will see how things are changing in America with private enterprise reasserting itself after a half century of government stagnation in space development and copy what we are doing.
The competition heats up: India has successfully completed a full duration static hot fire test of the cryogenic engine it is developing for its more powerful GSLV rocket.
The press release is very short and lacking in many details, including any detailed information about the engine being tested. However, this success bodes well for India’s plans to launch a new upgraded GSLV before the end of the year.
The Indian government today approved construction of LIGO-India, using some duplicate components already available from the American LIGO gravitational wave detector.
“We have built an exact copy of that instrument that can be used in the LIGO-India Observatory,” says David Shoemaker, leader of the Advanced LIGO Project and director of the MIT LIGO Lab, “ensuring that the new detector can both quickly come up to speed and match the U.S. detector performance.” LIGO will provide Indian researchers with the components and training to build and run the new Advanced LIGO detector, which will then be operated by the Indian team.
What this new instrument will accomplish is to give astronomers more information when a gravitational wave rolls past the Earth. By having detectors half a world apart, they will be able to better triangulate the direction the wave came from, which in turn will help astronomers eventually pinpoint its source event.
The competition heats up: India plans by 2020 to privatize its very successful PSLV rocket.
Not much information on what they plan to do, though the implication is that they want to shift ownership out of the government, a good thing.
The uncertainty of science: Even as NASA officials poo-poo the suspected meteorite impact in India that killed a bus driver, India scientists have done a chemical analysis of one of the rocks found near the site and found it to be a meteorite fragment.
According to a preliminary report by National College Instrumentation Facility (NCIF) in Trichy, a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) study on samples retrieved from the campus in Vellore where the blast occurred shows the “presence of carbonaceous chondrites”.
“Carbonaceous denotes objects containing carbon or its compounds and chondrites refer to non-metallic meteorite parts containing mineral granules,” K Anbarasu, a geologist who is also principal of the Trichy-based National College, told The Indian Express.
There remains uncertainty because the fragments tested did not actually come from the impact crater itself.
Anbarasu said the preliminary SEM study was conducted on “small pieces of black material” found near the blast site. “The crater formed at the spot had been already disturbed by other investigators. So we inspected the entire campus as any meteor incident would scatter several objects across the area before landing. Finally, we spotted several small pieces of this black material, one the size of a paperweight, on the terrace of a building nearby,” Anbarasu said.
Nonetheless, I think it unprofessional and inappropriate for a NASA official to comment on this event half a globe away. There is no way that they can really determine anything from the available photos taken of the impact site, and thus they should shut up.
The competition heats up: India and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) plan to sign two deals today, one of which will lead to the first Arab Mars mission.
It appears that India will help UAE build its first mission to Mars, using the technology they developed for Mangalyaan. In exchange, the second deal will bring up to $75 billion of UAE investment capital into India.
Officials in India are reporting what could be the first recorded death of a human by meteorite impact.
According to local reports, a bus driver was killed on Saturday when a meteorite landed in the area where he was walking, damaging the window panes of nearby buses and buildings. Three other people were injured.
The story is not yet confirmed, and could easily be proven wrong.
The competition heats up: India today successfully completed its first launch in 2016, placing in orbit the fifth of what will be a seven satellite constellation of home-built navigational satellites.
It was India’s 50th orbital launch, and another success for their smaller PSLV rocket. The article is especially worth reading as it includes a nice history of the country’s rocket program.
Because of a discovered leak, India’s space agency ISRO has delayed the first flight of an engineering test prototype of a reusable space shuttle.
Sources said on Sunday that the Reusable Launch Vehicle-Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD), under development at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) here at Thumba, developed a minor leak during a test, forcing the ISRO to postpone the mission. The ambitious RLV-TD, the first small step to building a ‘space shuttle’ which can return to earth after accomplishing space missions, is likely to be delayed up to April 2016. ISRO had originally planned a mid-2015 launch for the RLV-TD. It had later been postponed to January 2016.
VSSC Director Dr K Sivan said that some of the components had to be re-assembled. ‘’If things go as planned, we can launch the mission in the first week of February. Otherwise, the test will be conducted in the first week of April,’’ he said.
The competition heats up: India today successfully launched six commercial satellites into orbit using its smaller PSLV rocket.
During the flight they also tested the ability of the rocket’s fourth stage to restart its engines in orbit, a necessary ability for later commercial launches.
The competition heats up: The first two satellites in the first private weather satellite constellation will be launched on India’s PSLV rocket.
With 12 satellites on orbit, PlanetiQ will collect approximately 34,000 “occultations” per day, evenly distributed around the globe with high-density sampling over both land and water. Each occultation is a vertical profile of atmospheric data with very high vertical resolution, comprised of measurements less than every 200 meters from the Earth’s surface up into the ionosphere. The data is similar to that collected by weather balloons, but more accurate, more frequent and on a global scale.
“The world today lacks sufficient data to feed into weather models, especially the detailed vertical data that is critical to storm prediction. That’s why we see inaccurate or ambiguous forecasts for storms like Hurricane Joaquin, which can put numerous lives at risk and cost businesses millions of dollars due to inadequate preparation or risk management measures,” McCormick said. “Capturing the detailed vertical structure of the atmosphere from pole to pole, especially over the currently under-sampled oceans, is the missing link to improving forecasts of high-impact weather.”
This project is a win-win for aerospace. Not only will this weather constellation help shift ownership of weather satellites from government to private ownership, the company’s decision to use India’s PSLV rocket increases the competition in the launch industry.
A moment of terror: During the first week of successful operation, there was an initial moment of terror when the engineers checking out Astrosat, India’s first space telescope, thought the spacecraft was unable to point at its target accurately.
During the first orbit, there was a difficulty in detecting this Crab Nebula as the satellite happened to pass through the South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) region when Crab was in the field of view. SAA avoidance zone was deliberately kept wide to protect the instruments, and detectors were switched OFF in this interval during the initial days of Astrosat operation. When all the data were systematically analysed and data were selected based on the availability of Crab in the detector field of view, one could see the Crab emerging from Earth’s shadow (Fig 3).
Using the Crab Nebula as Astrosat’s first target, the check-out has been proceeding well, with full research operations expected to begin in the next few weeks.
The competition heats up: India today successfully launched Astrosat, its first space telescope.
ASTROSAT, with a mission life of five years, is armed with telescopes that will simultaneously study the space in visible light, ultraviolet (UV) rays and low- and high-energy X-rays, plus an X-ray scanning sky monitor to detect transient X-ray emissions and γ-ray bursts. The observatory aims to study star-birth regions and high-energy processes, including binary star systems of neutron stars and black holes.
This space observatory fills several gaps that have existed in astronomical research since the shut down of NASA’s Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer in 2012 as well as the International Ultraviolet Explorer in 1996.
The launch also put six other small satellites into orbit, demonstrating once again the reliability of India’s smaller Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).
The competition heats up: With their Mangalyaan Mars orbiter about to celebrate the completion of its first year in Mars orbit, Indian scientists noted this week that the spacecraft is in great shape and can function for years to come.
They have a large reserve of fuel on board and there are no known technical issues.
The competition heats up: India has successfully launched a military communications satellite using its home-built Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV).
Because of India’s bad habit of not giving distinct names to its space vehicles or spacecraft, I have discovered a bit a confusion about the version of GSLV that just launched. This rocket was built entirely in India, but it is the Mark II, not the Mark III, which is a significant upgrade and has so far only had one test flight.
Nonetheless, today’s Mark II launch is the second success in a row for the India-built version. Considering the number of failures of this version in the past, this success is a significant milestone for India’s space effort.
The competition heats up: India has begun the countdown for the third launch of its entirely homebuilt Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) rocket.
The launch is set for Thursday, and is attempting for the first time to place an actual payload into orbit, an Indian military communications satellite. Previous launches either failed with earlier versions of the rocket, or were carrying dummy payloads.
Cool image time! Using an image taken by India’s Mars Orbiter Mangalyaan from about 1,153 miles altitude, Indian scientists were able to create a 3D projection of Ophir Chasm, one of the side canyons of Valles Marineris, the solar system’s largest canyons.
The image itself had a resolution of about 96 meters per pixel.
The competition heats up: India’s space agency ISRO says it is facing a manpower shortage caused by its recent successes and increased demand for more space achievements.
ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC) director M Annadurai – who is also considered one of the heroes of the India’s Chandrayaan-1 mission to the moon (October 2008-August 2009) and the November 2013-launched MOM – has said after a steep increase in ISRO’s workforce expansion between 1982 and 1992 there has been no significant growth in ISRO’s workforce, which has remained in the region of 16,500 over several years. “There is a crunch,” he admitted on the sidelines of the Aerospace & Defence Manufacturing Summit 2015, although adding that it was relative in nature. “The requirements have increased but the workforce has remained more or less the same.”
Annadurai said the requirements were from domestic as well as foreign origin. The ISRO on July 11 launched five British satellites in a single launch, which is considered a record as it was the Indian space agency’s heaviest commercial launch. On the domestic front, he said, there are plans to increase Indian satellite launches from the current four a year to ten in the near future – which requires manpower to meet the quality requirements.
Without doubt India’s recent successes demand a growth in its space industry. The danger here is that India will add jobs to its government space agency rather than hire private companies to do the work and let them do the hiring. If they do the latter, the companies will have flexibility and will be able to adjust quickly to changing conditions. If the former the government will instead be hiring employees who will be seen by politicians as a vested interest they must protect, whether or not it makes sense economically. The first option will allow the aerospace industry to grow naturally. The second will fossilize that industry around pork supporting inefficient political agendas.
Hopefully the new conservative Modi government in India will recognize the dangers of expanding its government agency and will go the private route. This quote from the article gives me hope:
“We need the same number of people (16,500) outside to support operations, which is why we are encouraging private partnerships,” he said. Senior ISRO scientists have also said they have been encouraging retiring space scientists to foster links with private firms to encourage them to work with ISRO in the future. This is with an aim to bring in an “outside manpower” to bolster the in-house activities by ISRO scientists.
The competition heats up: ISRO has successfully completed another long duration firing of its home-built high-thrust cyrogenic rocket engines.
Before its planned flight late in 2016, they will do more engine burns, this time while simulating conditions at high altitude.
The competition heats up: India has successfully completed a full duration engine test of its most powerful home-built rocket engine.
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully conducted the much-awaited ‘full endurance test’ of the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle Mk III’s indigenous cryogenic CE-20 engine at ISRO Propulsion Complex (IPRC) in Mahendragiri in the district on Thursday. The CE-20 was ignited and tested for 800 seconds from 5 p.m. to study the performance of the engine though the actual required duration was only 635 seconds.
This success puts them ever closer to creating their own rocket comparable to the Falcon 9 and capable of competing for commercial business in the international launch market.
The competition heats up: India today successfully launched five British satellites on a single launch of its PSLV rocket.
The competition heats up: Hindustan Aeronautics has completed construction and handed over to ISRO the orbiter structure of India’s next lunar mission, Chandrayaan-2.
The mission will include an orbiter, lander, and rover, and is aiming for launch sometime after 2017.
